Exactly. Just like how restaurants have the right to deny service to anyone. High class restaurants won't allow you to come in if you aren't dress appropriately.
You need a weasel word in there; 'have the right to deny service to almost anyone'. Denying service to certain protected groups for certain reasons will get you sued, no matter how private your restaurant is.
The problem where that analogy falls down is with EULAs. Rarely can you read them before purchasing. While some companies might refund your purchase price, the retail industry has pounded it into everyone's brain that refunds on software will not happen.
And to throw another kink into the system. I've been playing WoW for about a year. With every update you are required to re-affirm your commitment to their EULA/TOS documents. You cannot continue to play if you don't update. Suppose with the recent update one of those documents changed and I no longer agreed with it. Should I be expected to forfeit my original $50 and a years worth of subscription fees because they changed the terms?
In your restaurant analogy, if you are refused service you are not required to pay for your dinner anyway. Suppose for instance, you ordered a hamburger and they refuse to omit the onions. But only tell you that on delivery, after payment. How do you get your refund if the restaurant doesn't care if you are a satisfied customer?
Here is the problem with their EULA/TOS. Like any other, it is full of legalese and more than a little wordy. Most people skip it for the same reason they skip all the others. Then to discourage people even more, you have to 'agree' to the EULA/TOS every time they send out an update. God forbid they post a diff so you can read just the part that changed from the last update. In my opinion, the frequent requirement to re-read the EULA/TOS documents as well as no indication of what has changed, if anything, are intentional actions to obscure changes in their policies.
Some are saying that if you aren't cheating, you have nothing to worry about, the same could be said that if the changes in Terms are no big deal, why not announce them.
FWIW, while the article states that WoW players have known about it for a long time, I have been asking around this afternoon and have yet to find anyone that was aware of this program. I guess none of us have been reading the Terms of Use.
I had a lot of problem with Zone Alarm flashing my screen whenever I ran a DirectX app. I switched to Kerio and have been reasonably pleased with it. Although it's not quite right on my XP laptop, but then again, the laptop has other problems.... I put it on there simply to see what apps were phoning home. For instance, Toshiba laptops do every time you log in if they are on the net and look for updates. Oddly, in 3 years my laptop never found a Toshiba update.
BTW, robflynn would also be in violation because it is more than one word. That's why they don't allow spaces in names and force proper casing.
WoW naming conventions are ridiculous, and sporadically enforced. If you get reported, and if the GM feels like doing something about it, then you might have your name changed.
How come Halon wasn't allowed in government installations?
Halon contains bromine and contributes to ozone depletion, just like CFCs. When I worked there, Halon was being phased out, so no new installations where allowed to use it. The facility I worked at was a temporary data center for the 1990 Census.
I used to work in a large datacenter for a mutual funds company. At a guess, the computer room was 200k sq/ft with about half of that 3480 drives and the tape library.
Every Sunday night they would switch from mains to batteries to exercise the system. So at around 1am the air conditioners and lights would go out and the silence would be deafening. It always made your heart skip a beat while you checked to make sure the lights on the drives were still on. 30 seconds later the lights and air conditioning would come back, but I never got used to it.
Oh, and I also worked in a Gov't datacenter for a while. So of course, Halon wasn't allowed. The VAXen were 'protected' by a sprinkler system. The disaster plan was for one operator to hold the sprinkler abort button while another pulled the t-bars and covered the machines with plastic. Then of course, I worked Sundays as the sole operator. Hmm, do you burn holding the button or get electrocuted pulling t-bars. Good thing we never had a fire, because I would have been listening for the explosion from my car.
You've answered the problem in your first sentence with your second.
No, I haven't. But it does point out that you don't understand the problem. Some students get test anxiety. They can understand the concepts perfectly, but put them in a stressful situation and they can't communicate them properly. It won't affect them in a working environment because rarely are you put in a situation where you have a small number of hours to solve a problem, with no reference materials, and a predetermined solution.
The mentality in college is not 'what is the right answer', it's 'what does the professor expect to hear'.
Following your logic, should we remove all term papers from the curriculums because students have found a way to buy them?
I never understood the CS professors who gave graded homework assignments in the first place.
...
In my opinion the only real use of grades is to show others, outside the university, how well you've mastered a particular subject, and the only way to do that is through testing.
It's because some students do better in practical work than they do on tests. Also, there are good tests and bad tests. Some instructors have never learned how to create an exam that tests your knowledge with clear, concise questions. Coding assignments allow honest students to overcome those limitations.
Well, the attitude that everyone should build from source can be a problem. But not with gaim. I haven't had any problems with Debian (apt-get) and Windows, as least not in the recent past. There was a time when the gtk libraries were a separate install for Windows, and for at least a short time it was hard to find the right ones. I prefer not to build applications, I get enough of that at work, so if a binary is available I use it. My biggest problem is remembering to install upgrades. I downloaded 1.5, but I'm still running 1.2.1.
FWIW, I like gaim because I can use the exact same app when I can choose my OS and when I can't. And multi-protocol is a must.
Companies with decades of absolute reliability on openVMS systems are paying large wads of money to HP for them, and hp will not turn a blind eye to it.
HP has already missed the boat. If your Alpha is critical to your business, you started looking for alternatives when the Alpha chip was end of lifed. Moving to Itanium, or any Intel architecture, required rebuilding and relicensing all of your software. Then, once your pocketbook was considerably lighter, you have to regression test your entire business to make sure everything still works like it's supposed to. You don't want to get into an audit 6 months down the road and find some little oddity in the Intel port was throwing your numbers off. Or that your forecasting is broken and you are over/under stocked. And if you're going to do that, you might as well investigate new opportunities, which is probably going to mean looking at vendors with larger install bases and some type of future.
I'm really surprised at all the outrage surrounding poor RIM losing this battle. Short memory I guess. Isn't RIM the company that The Register affectionately labeled Lawsuits In Motion because of all the patent lawsuits they file?
If DECWindows is part of the OS, then X11 is part of Linux. MS chose to make their GUI part of their core OS. OpenVMS doesn't include a TCP/IP stack, it's a 3rd party add-on. For instance, Multinet.
VMS has hardware and software clustering, Windows and Linux have software clustering. I would be willing to bet that HPFS and NTFS are as complex as the VMS file system. And any of the journalling file systems are more complex. The fact that other file systems don't support versioning isn't because they can't, it's because it wasn't considered important enough to include. VMS has shadow disks, Windows and Linux have software RAID.
I don't have anything against OpenVMS, I've worked in VMS shops most of my career. I'd love to see a MS server handle 500 users logged in like our tiny alpha box. But MS has been busily adding 'features' to windows for the last 10 years. Not that all those features have been good. OpenVMS, OTOH, has pretty much been in maintenance mode since Compaq bought DEC. VAX is dead, Alpha is dead, Itanium, does anyone really want one of those? And once everyone starts replacing their Alpha, OpenVMS will have no purpose. Which means HP has had no incentive to develop any new features.
It's not a commercial vs open source thing. Most software is crap. But crappy commercial software generally doesn't stay around very long. Open Source software, OTOH, gets uploaded to Sourceforge and never goes away. (actually, SF seems to be a graveyard for quite a few failed commercial projects too)
I personally have one bit of software that I'm getting ready to retire, after 7 years of working just good enough. It's stability problems were all the fault of Windows' spooler.exe, really....
OpenVMS isn't perfect, it has bugs too. And it has buggy application software as well. I have seen OpenVMS on VAX and Alpha equipment reboot for no apparent reason. I have seen reboots scheduled because a process wouldn't release a particular device. And I have seen system services fail under a load.
I don't think comparing OpenVMS to any recent version of Windows is fair though. The feature requirements and complexity of modern operating systems is huge compared to OpenVMS.
One thing I really miss with C++ and Java is properties. What's with a language that will put all the work into a ternary operator so they don't have to type if/then/else, but insists on mutators and accessors because properties are syntactic sugar?
And if you really want someone to understand the power of OOP, give them the VCL chart from Delphi or C++Builder to study for a while.
But how is this system better than simply having the OS automatically check for updates and download them silently?
Suppose, in addition to current automatic OS updates, a machine was placed on the network and listened for attacks. In response to a particular attack, it would send back a response to patch the vulnerability and clean the system.
That doesn't tie up network resources looking to see if machines need patched. It could be argued that until a security hole is exploited, it's not a liability.
Of course, that's not what is being proposed either. FTA "He sees a world where "strictly controlled" nematodes are used by ISPs, government organizations and large companies to show significant cost savings." ISPs? followed by lawsuits. Government? big brother implications. I think this borders on nice in theory, doesn't work in the real world. I'd give it less than 24 hours before one of these nemotodes was mutated to a malicious worm.
Think about it, most POS systems just don't have room for a hard drive, so really need to be small and use embedded software, loaded from ROM or FLASH.
Oh please, hard drives are not a limitation. Next trip to Walmart (or Target) and look at the RF scanners they use on the floor. Most are using Symbol PDTs (6846s are common) These are DOS based 802.11 (or Spectrum24) wireless. OS and apps fit nicely on flash drives.
DOS hmm, you say "well DOS is so small, that's nothing special". Ok, take a look at Symbol's MC9060. They run Windows Mobile and some genius even put a web server in the base install. (32m and 64m flash, btw) There is no reason a Linux system couldn't be built in the same amount of space.
How about an even smaller device, Motorola's MPx220 cell phone runs Windows.
When it comes to POS machines you have all kinds of room. Don't want to maintain flash on your registers, run them as thin clients or load their boot image from the network.
Interesting you should mention Lowes. I was there today (which isn't really uncommon), but just as the cashier is finishing ringing things up, she looks at me and says "I hit total and the register rebooted". NCR equipment, user logon is X. I didn't pay attention to see if it was running Linux or just a thin client connected to a unix server.
You've never read about the various "counterfeit parts" cases?
Counterfeit parts and non-OEM sanctioned parts are two different things. For instance, if you made a bunch of head lights and labeled them 'Genuine GM', you would be quite likely get sued. OTOH, if you made them to spec and marketed them as Justins' Miracle Headlights, they would have no reason to. Assuming there were no patent issues.
The company I work for has done extensive R&D on ABS systems. Currently they are doing an educational program so that dealers and jobbers can recognize parts that are being passed off as ours. Not only have we invested a ton of $$$ developing the systems, but sub-standard parts with our name on it could harm our reputation. If we catch someone using our patents and brand should we prosecute? Absolutely. Would our OEM customers? That would depend on whether they were at risk. For instance, label something Genuine GM, and GM will be unhappy. But if it had our brand, their concern would only be related to their dealer network. (assuming GM used our ABS, I don't believe they do)
I'm not sure how we got here though, other than a bad analogy....
Who will generally have their own relationship with the auto manufacturer. Getting true aftermarket parts where the auto manufacturer or their loyal henchmen did not get any kind of cut is awfully difficult. My understanding is that everyone concerned kind of plays ball and lets the money trickle down, and when they don't, there tend to be legal consequences.
Nice conspiracy theory. I'll give it 4 stars. It would be 5, but you didn't have any links to nefarious activities by auto makers.
You might know an awful lot more about the business than I do,
Actually, I do. Here's how it works in the real world; a part manufacturer has two markets; OE and aftermarket. Suppliers want to sell to the big auto makers because a, it means they can produce large quantities, thereby using volume efficiencies to reduce their costs. And b, there is an advantage to having customers walk into your friendly NAPA jobber and hear "these parts are from the supplier who made the original parts on your car." A large percentage of people will put Goodyear tires on their car if that's what was on it when they bought it.
The auto manufacturer does NOT get a cut of aftermarket sales. I doubt they even care about them. What they do care about is their purchase price and vendor performance. They require deeper discounts due to volume and they have very specific delivery schedules and packaging requirements.
It's much easier to cut costs up front to increase your profit margin than it is to try and maintain a bunch of back room deals.
Works created by federal government employees during the course of their official duties are not copyright-able.
And they get around this by contracting with a private company. The private company gets paid to create content, retains the copyright, and then gives the government a license to use it.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Just like how restaurants have the right to deny service to anyone. High class restaurants won't allow you to come in if you aren't dress appropriately.
You need a weasel word in there; 'have the right to deny service to almost anyone'. Denying service to certain protected groups for certain reasons will get you sued, no matter how private your restaurant is.
The problem where that analogy falls down is with EULAs. Rarely can you read them before purchasing. While some companies might refund your purchase price, the retail industry has pounded it into everyone's brain that refunds on software will not happen.
And to throw another kink into the system. I've been playing WoW for about a year. With every update you are required to re-affirm your commitment to their EULA/TOS documents. You cannot continue to play if you don't update. Suppose with the recent update one of those documents changed and I no longer agreed with it. Should I be expected to forfeit my original $50 and a years worth of subscription fees because they changed the terms?
In your restaurant analogy, if you are refused service you are not required to pay for your dinner anyway. Suppose for instance, you ordered a hamburger and they refuse to omit the onions. But only tell you that on delivery, after payment. How do you get your refund if the restaurant doesn't care if you are a satisfied customer?
Here is the problem with their EULA/TOS. Like any other, it is full of legalese and more than a little wordy. Most people skip it for the same reason they skip all the others. Then to discourage people even more, you have to 'agree' to the EULA/TOS every time they send out an update. God forbid they post a diff so you can read just the part that changed from the last update. In my opinion, the frequent requirement to re-read the EULA/TOS documents as well as no indication of what has changed, if anything, are intentional actions to obscure changes in their policies.
Some are saying that if you aren't cheating, you have nothing to worry about, the same could be said that if the changes in Terms are no big deal, why not announce them.
FWIW, while the article states that WoW players have known about it for a long time, I have been asking around this afternoon and have yet to find anyone that was aware of this program. I guess none of us have been reading the Terms of Use.
I had a lot of problem with Zone Alarm flashing my screen whenever I ran a DirectX app. I switched to Kerio and have been reasonably pleased with it. Although it's not quite right on my XP laptop, but then again, the laptop has other problems.... I put it on there simply to see what apps were phoning home. For instance, Toshiba laptops do every time you log in if they are on the net and look for updates. Oddly, in 3 years my laptop never found a Toshiba update.
I love the alternating caps, I wish I would've thought of that...
It wouldn't matter. Proper casing in one of the few rules enforced programatically. He would be known as Hadak.
BTW, robflynn would also be in violation because it is more than one word. That's why they don't allow spaces in names and force proper casing.
WoW naming conventions are ridiculous, and sporadically enforced. If you get reported, and if the GM feels like doing something about it, then you might have your name changed.
How come Halon wasn't allowed in government installations?
Halon contains bromine and contributes to ozone depletion, just like CFCs. When I worked there, Halon was being phased out, so no new installations where allowed to use it. The facility I worked at was a temporary data center for the 1990 Census.
I used to work in a large datacenter for a mutual funds company. At a guess, the computer room was 200k sq/ft with about half of that 3480 drives and the tape library.
Every Sunday night they would switch from mains to batteries to exercise the system. So at around 1am the air conditioners and lights would go out and the silence would be deafening. It always made your heart skip a beat while you checked to make sure the lights on the drives were still on. 30 seconds later the lights and air conditioning would come back, but I never got used to it.
Oh, and I also worked in a Gov't datacenter for a while. So of course, Halon wasn't allowed. The VAXen were 'protected' by a sprinkler system. The disaster plan was for one operator to hold the sprinkler abort button while another pulled the t-bars and covered the machines with plastic. Then of course, I worked Sundays as the sole operator. Hmm, do you burn holding the button or get electrocuted pulling t-bars. Good thing we never had a fire, because I would have been listening for the explosion from my car.
Need I mention Ringworld?
I would love to see a series based on Ringworld. Or some Niven movies. Destiny Road would make an interesting movie.
Or maybe C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy could be Lord of the Rings without the boring parts.
You've answered the problem in your first sentence with your second.
No, I haven't. But it does point out that you don't understand the problem. Some students get test anxiety. They can understand the concepts perfectly, but put them in a stressful situation and they can't communicate them properly. It won't affect them in a working environment because rarely are you put in a situation where you have a small number of hours to solve a problem, with no reference materials, and a predetermined solution.
The mentality in college is not 'what is the right answer', it's 'what does the professor expect to hear'.
Following your logic, should we remove all term papers from the curriculums because students have found a way to buy them?
In my opinion the only real use of grades is to show others, outside the university, how well you've mastered a particular subject, and the only way to do that is through testing.
It's because some students do better in practical work than they do on tests. Also, there are good tests and bad tests. Some instructors have never learned how to create an exam that tests your knowledge with clear, concise questions. Coding assignments allow honest students to overcome those limitations.
Well, the attitude that everyone should build from source can be a problem. But not with gaim. I haven't had any problems with Debian (apt-get) and Windows, as least not in the recent past. There was a time when the gtk libraries were a separate install for Windows, and for at least a short time it was hard to find the right ones. I prefer not to build applications, I get enough of that at work, so if a binary is available I use it. My biggest problem is remembering to install upgrades. I downloaded 1.5, but I'm still running 1.2.1.
FWIW, I like gaim because I can use the exact same app when I can choose my OS and when I can't. And multi-protocol is a must.
Companies with decades of absolute reliability on openVMS systems are paying large wads of money to HP for them, and hp will not turn a blind eye to it.
HP has already missed the boat. If your Alpha is critical to your business, you started looking for alternatives when the Alpha chip was end of lifed. Moving to Itanium, or any Intel architecture, required rebuilding and relicensing all of your software. Then, once your pocketbook was considerably lighter, you have to regression test your entire business to make sure everything still works like it's supposed to. You don't want to get into an audit 6 months down the road and find some little oddity in the Intel port was throwing your numbers off. Or that your forecasting is broken and you are over/under stocked. And if you're going to do that, you might as well investigate new opportunities, which is probably going to mean looking at vendors with larger install bases and some type of future.
I'm really surprised at all the outrage surrounding poor RIM losing this battle. Short memory I guess. Isn't RIM the company that The Register affectionately labeled Lawsuits In Motion because of all the patent lawsuits they file?
n ology_settles_with_lawsuits/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/28/good_tech
Be sure and follow some of the links at the bottom of the article.
If DECWindows is part of the OS, then X11 is part of Linux. MS chose to make their GUI part of their core OS. OpenVMS doesn't include a TCP/IP stack, it's a 3rd party add-on. For instance, Multinet.
VMS has hardware and software clustering, Windows and Linux have software clustering. I would be willing to bet that HPFS and NTFS are as complex as the VMS file system. And any of the journalling file systems are more complex. The fact that other file systems don't support versioning isn't because they can't, it's because it wasn't considered important enough to include. VMS has shadow disks, Windows and Linux have software RAID.
I don't have anything against OpenVMS, I've worked in VMS shops most of my career. I'd love to see a MS server handle 500 users logged in like our tiny alpha box. But MS has been busily adding 'features' to windows for the last 10 years. Not that all those features have been good. OpenVMS, OTOH, has pretty much been in maintenance mode since Compaq bought DEC. VAX is dead, Alpha is dead, Itanium, does anyone really want one of those? And once everyone starts replacing their Alpha, OpenVMS will have no purpose. Which means HP has had no incentive to develop any new features.
It's not a commercial vs open source thing. Most software is crap. But crappy commercial software generally doesn't stay around very long. Open Source software, OTOH, gets uploaded to Sourceforge and never goes away. (actually, SF seems to be a graveyard for quite a few failed commercial projects too)
I personally have one bit of software that I'm getting ready to retire, after 7 years of working just good enough. It's stability problems were all the fault of Windows' spooler.exe, really....
OpenVMS isn't perfect, it has bugs too. And it has buggy application software as well. I have seen OpenVMS on VAX and Alpha equipment reboot for no apparent reason. I have seen reboots scheduled because a process wouldn't release a particular device. And I have seen system services fail under a load.
I don't think comparing OpenVMS to any recent version of Windows is fair though. The feature requirements and complexity of modern operating systems is huge compared to OpenVMS.
One thing I really miss with C++ and Java is properties. What's with a language that will put all the work into a ternary operator so they don't have to type if/then/else, but insists on mutators and accessors because properties are syntactic sugar?
And if you really want someone to understand the power of OOP, give them the VCL chart from Delphi or C++Builder to study for a while.
You're being entirely too logical for these types of discussions. It doesn't leave room for politics and postering.
We all know what happenned to the big bad IBM of yesterday...
Their plan worked so well they became a virtual monopoly and got stomped on by the US Federal government? I think Google would be happy with that.
Is it IBM -> Microsoft -> Google?
But how is this system better than simply having the OS automatically check for updates and download them silently?
Suppose, in addition to current automatic OS updates, a machine was placed on the network and listened for attacks. In response to a particular attack, it would send back a response to patch the vulnerability and clean the system.
That doesn't tie up network resources looking to see if machines need patched. It could be argued that until a security hole is exploited, it's not a liability.
Of course, that's not what is being proposed either. FTA "He sees a world where "strictly controlled" nematodes are used by ISPs, government organizations and large companies to show significant cost savings." ISPs? followed by lawsuits. Government? big brother implications. I think this borders on nice in theory, doesn't work in the real world. I'd give it less than 24 hours before one of these nemotodes was mutated to a malicious worm.
Think about it, most POS systems just don't have room for a hard drive, so really need to be small and use embedded software, loaded from ROM or FLASH.
Oh please, hard drives are not a limitation. Next trip to Walmart (or Target) and look at the RF scanners they use on the floor. Most are using Symbol PDTs (6846s are common) These are DOS based 802.11 (or Spectrum24) wireless. OS and apps fit nicely on flash drives.
DOS hmm, you say "well DOS is so small, that's nothing special". Ok, take a look at Symbol's MC9060. They run Windows Mobile and some genius even put a web server in the base install. (32m and 64m flash, btw) There is no reason a Linux system couldn't be built in the same amount of space.
How about an even smaller device, Motorola's MPx220 cell phone runs Windows.
When it comes to POS machines you have all kinds of room. Don't want to maintain flash on your registers, run them as thin clients or load their boot image from the network.
Interesting you should mention Lowes. I was there today (which isn't really uncommon), but just as the cashier is finishing ringing things up, she looks at me and says "I hit total and the register rebooted". NCR equipment, user logon is X. I didn't pay attention to see if it was running Linux or just a thin client connected to a unix server.
You've never read about the various "counterfeit parts" cases?
Counterfeit parts and non-OEM sanctioned parts are two different things. For instance, if you made a bunch of head lights and labeled them 'Genuine GM', you would be quite likely get sued. OTOH, if you made them to spec and marketed them as Justins' Miracle Headlights, they would have no reason to. Assuming there were no patent issues.
The company I work for has done extensive R&D on ABS systems. Currently they are doing an educational program so that dealers and jobbers can recognize parts that are being passed off as ours. Not only have we invested a ton of $$$ developing the systems, but sub-standard parts with our name on it could harm our reputation. If we catch someone using our patents and brand should we prosecute? Absolutely. Would our OEM customers? That would depend on whether they were at risk. For instance, label something Genuine GM, and GM will be unhappy. But if it had our brand, their concern would only be related to their dealer network. (assuming GM used our ABS, I don't believe they do)
I'm not sure how we got here though, other than a bad analogy....
Who will generally have their own relationship with the auto manufacturer. Getting true aftermarket parts where the auto manufacturer or their loyal henchmen did not get any kind of cut is awfully difficult. My understanding is that everyone concerned kind of plays ball and lets the money trickle down, and when they don't, there tend to be legal consequences.
Nice conspiracy theory. I'll give it 4 stars. It would be 5, but you didn't have any links to nefarious activities by auto makers.
You might know an awful lot more about the business than I do,
Actually, I do. Here's how it works in the real world; a part manufacturer has two markets; OE and aftermarket. Suppliers want to sell to the big auto makers because a, it means they can produce large quantities, thereby using volume efficiencies to reduce their costs. And b, there is an advantage to having customers walk into your friendly NAPA jobber and hear "these parts are from the supplier who made the original parts on your car." A large percentage of people will put Goodyear tires on their car if that's what was on it when they bought it.
The auto manufacturer does NOT get a cut of aftermarket sales. I doubt they even care about them. What they do care about is their purchase price and vendor performance. They require deeper discounts due to volume and they have very specific delivery schedules and packaging requirements.
It's much easier to cut costs up front to increase your profit margin than it is to try and maintain a bunch of back room deals.
Works created by federal government employees during the course of their official duties are not copyright-able.
And they get around this by contracting with a private company. The private company gets paid to create content, retains the copyright, and then gives the government a license to use it.