Right now publishers still use the term "buy a game", but if they simply used "buy a license to play the game", then the first sale doctrine won't be applicable.
Except that the publishers already make that claim, and the courts continue to (for the most part) discount it and rule that software is sold, not licensed. The paragraph in the Wikipedia article titled "Computer Software" elucidates this situation, but it's too long to quote effectively.
The first-sale doctrine is a limitation on copyright that was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1908 and subsequently codified in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. Â 109. The doctrine allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. That means that a copyright holder's rights to control the change of ownership of a particular copy end once that copy is sold, as long as no additional copies are made. This doctrine is also referred to as the "first sale rule" or "exhaustion rule".
A friend of mine always says that everybody should be shot and thrown in a river once in their lives. If people can get over the fact that life isn't fair and deal with the situation as it presents itself, they get out of the river and survive. If they can't, they don't.
It certainly would make for a more interesting world.
T-Mobile has several handsets that support this very feature, they connect over wi-fi whenever possible and handoff to GSM the rest of the time (hopefully) without dropping the call in progress.
My apologies for the Flash site behind the link. =(
Now at the same time, Monsanto does not get to fly those seeds over random farms and drop them and then sue those farmers, thats bad business, Yes, they do.
In general, I don't have a problem with finding a way to remunerate R&D companies for their efforts, but this specific idea comes up all the time, and is flawed. There are numerous examples of cross-pollination of Monsanto seeds into random nearby stock, after which Monsanto goes off and sues the farmer for infringement. This is completely immoral, in my opinion.
> Unless you tried Fedora 8, you haven't tried the current offerings, so you can't have an informed opinion about linux.
Isn't that a bit like saying unless I've used Windows Vista, I can't have an opinion about Windows? It's very much like saying that unless you've used Windows Vista, your opinion on the state of the art in Microsoft's consumer desktop operating system offerings is out of date. It does not invalidate opinions about older versions of Windows, but it opens you up to the rejoinder, "Yeah, they've fixed that in the latest version" (i.e. security, graphical eye candy, DirectX 10, etc.). The grandparent poster is not right, but he's not entirely wrong either.
That said, I'm glad to hear that you're going to give Ubuntu a shot. It really is something else in terms of ease of use and ease of management, and it really does keep getting better with every release.:-)
The movie The Final Cut posits a similar world, where people are implanted with "Zoe" chips at birth that record everything they see and hear throughout their entire lives. When a person dies, the Zoe chip is extracted and given to a "cutter", whose job it is to turn all of those years of memories into a brief "highlight reel" for the bereaved to remember him by.
It's actually a pretty good movie, even though it stars Robin Williams. Really, I promise.;-)
The novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom details an implementation of this sort of ubiquitous access, known as "Whuffie". Everybody has an implanted computer which they can use to check "the web" for how esteemed is any person they meet.
Excerpted:
This was a good fight, one we could have a thousand times without resolving. I'd get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn't starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented -- your personal capital with your friends and neighbors -- you more accurately gauged your success.
I'm personally looking forward to a society where people no longer feel that they have to hide their perfectly average behaviors because they're afraid that other people (who do the exact same thing) will find out, i.e. homosexuality, sexual "deviancy" like kinks and fetishes, and anything that George Carlin has mentioned in a monologue.;-)
So you want proprietary drivers and hardware that costs more?
Yes to the hardware, no to the drivers. I want Dell to assemble computers that already have pre-assembled and pre-tested Linux hardware configurations, with official drivers supported by the community, along with instructions inside. I also want a pony.:-P
[...]and the "community" would cry their eyes out because their precious kernel was "tainted" by code that actually made Linux usable.
I'm under the impression that there exists at least one piece of hardware of pretty much every type that has decent, if not official, support by real drivers. What I want is a computer that has all of that hardware in it already, along with a list of what those drivers are. From that point, I could probably figure out how to get my distribution of choice running on the hardware.
[...]but Dell makes money by selling in volume at low, low prices. "Real" hardware would skew that[...]
As a large reseller, I'm pretty sure that Dell could purchase just about any component it wants in sufficient volume. If it decides to release a laptop line with non-Winmodems, for instance, I imagine they'd be able to find not a few vendors who would be willing to compete to supply them. As for the price issue, yes, the price would be a little more expensive, I'm sure, but I would personally consider it worthhwhile (and I would expect the price differential to be smaller than you'd think, with the removal of the Windows tax).
[...]I've been wondering what a distro would look like where every package was at least 1.0 or higher... Even Ubuntu with it's limited (but great) selection, many big pieces are still pre-1.0 versions.
At this very moment, I'm playing World of Warcraft with wine 0.9.32, which is not 1.0, but which serves me very well for what I'm trying to accomplish. It's all in how you look at it; there's lots of software out there at version 4 or what have you, that I wouldn't dare install on anything I cared about.
Although I know your reply is tongue-in-cheek, it is still a serious question.
I support several users who have to travel for business, and unfortunately, not every hotel offers ethernet or Wi-Fi in its rooms. While none of the users I support happen to use Linux, I'm sure that the problem exists for other IT folks in positions like mine.
And, even if I can't buy non-Winmodems at retail, I expect Dell has just a little more clout than I do when it comes to acquiring hardware.;-)
What I want from Dell is a commitment to selling a machine with hardware that is supported by the community. No Winmodems, no ndiswrapper, but actual, tested, "we put this in a box together and it works like we think it does" hardware.
Past that, I couldn't possibly care less what distribution of Linux they throw on it. If it's a distribution I like and am willing to use, then more power to me. If not, "lsmod" and I'm off and installing the distribution of my choice. Either way, I'm golden.
I own a Dell Inspiron 4100, and I remember what a holy terror getting Linux to run on that machine was (with full hardware support). If I could buy a laptop from Dell with a piece of paper that says, "The network adapter uses the 'eepro100' driver," etc., then I would be a happy customer.
The kind of canonical article about SVN homedirs is this one: Subverting your homedir. I've got it set up between Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows, and it's pretty awesome.
Another example is here in a LUG's wiki. Also, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer questions about my setup.
I suppose it's that whole living vicariously through the game, which is why we play RPG's in the first place.
See, now, when I started playing WoW, I created an Undead Warlock, just because I thought the idea of playing a skeleton riding around on a fiery horse sounded wicked cool.
I'm also a huge fan of my Squeezebox, and I thought I'd share a couple of tips with you.
If you have several SB2s, you can coordinate them all to play at the same time, so that you have synced music in several rooms or the whole house. [...] I'm not sure if units will sync from the remote or only from the web interface. I'm fairly sure you have to CREATE the sync via web browser, but I suspect it will probably just work from then on. I believe you'd hit play on any unit in a group, and they would all start playing.
The synchronization can be done from any Squeezebox connected to a given SlimServer, with any other Squeezebox(es) also connected to that SlimServer. They do behave as you expect, in that the "play" signal from any member of the group propagates to all of the other members. The synchronized Squeezeboxes also share playlists, though, so you can organize a playlist (or load a saved one) on one Squeezebox that all of them will then follow.
Also, the SlimServer software ships with a Java-based Squeezebox emulator called SoftSqueeze. Your SlimServer web interface should have a link to it somewhere; in the Default skin, it's down in the lower-left corner of the left-hand frame. This software can be used to turn virtually any computer (since it's Java and all) into another Squeezebox, which will then connect to the SlimServer and appear exactly like a hardware Squeezebox. The SoftSqueeze clients can even be synchronized with hardware players.
What backup system do you have in place? I'd like to implement something like this at the place I just started, as opposed to the current procedure of "dumping the file server to a firewire drive whenever we remember to do so". =(
This topic shows up about once a year, and I always make it a point to pimp my favorite productivity enhancer, GeoShell.
GeoShell is a shell replacement, which means it runs instead of your taskbar and start menu. You can easily replicate those if you really like them, but I much prefer the flexibility of having individually-docked "GeoBars", which are completely customizable. For instance, along the top of my screen I have a GeoBar showing all my drives for easy access, a GeoBar with system and network traffic monitors and a clock, and a GeoBar with my QuickLaunch folder. Add the GeoBar in the bottom-right corner for running tasks and the system tray, and I'm set. You can also create menus which can be triggered by GeoBar icons, mouse clicks, and even keyboard shortcuts, such as my running tasks menu (Win+T) and my QuickLaunch menu (Win+Q).
I apologize; I tend to ramble. Feel free to ignore what I was saying, but do go check out the Screenshots archive to see just how flexible and customizable you can get. =)
P.S.- If anybody knows of a window manager for Linux that affords this level of customization, please drop me a line. I've tried Kahakai, Fluxbox and XFCE, but none of them are quite what I'm looking for.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody else remembers "Strange Luck"??!? That was (and still is) one of my favorite shows ever. :'(
Right now publishers still use the term "buy a game", but if they simply used "buy a license to play the game", then the first sale doctrine won't be applicable.
Except that the publishers already make that claim, and the courts continue to (for the most part) discount it and rule that software is sold, not licensed. The paragraph in the Wikipedia article titled "Computer Software" elucidates this situation, but it's too long to quote effectively.
The first-sale doctrine is a limitation on copyright that was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1908 and subsequently codified in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. Â 109. The doctrine allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. That means that a copyright holder's rights to control the change of ownership of a particular copy end once that copy is sold, as long as no additional copies are made. This doctrine is also referred to as the "first sale rule" or "exhaustion rule".
Is my justification.
A friend of mine always says that everybody should be shot and thrown in a river once in their lives. If people can get over the fact that life isn't fair and deal with the situation as it presents itself, they get out of the river and survive. If they can't, they don't.
It certainly would make for a more interesting world.
I can positively assert that the phone works great with T-Mobile's network. Mine arrived today and I'm already loving it.
T-Mobile HotSpot @Home
T-Mobile has several handsets that support this very feature, they connect over wi-fi whenever possible and handoff to GSM the rest of the time (hopefully) without dropping the call in progress.
My apologies for the Flash site behind the link. =(
In general, I don't have a problem with finding a way to remunerate R&D companies for their efforts, but this specific idea comes up all the time, and is flawed. There are numerous examples of cross-pollination of Monsanto seeds into random nearby stock, after which Monsanto goes off and sues the farmer for infringement. This is completely immoral, in my opinion.
Isn't that a bit like saying unless I've used Windows Vista, I can't have an opinion about Windows? It's very much like saying that unless you've used Windows Vista, your opinion on the state of the art in Microsoft's consumer desktop operating system offerings is out of date. It does not invalidate opinions about older versions of Windows, but it opens you up to the rejoinder, "Yeah, they've fixed that in the latest version" (i.e. security, graphical eye candy, DirectX 10, etc.). The grandparent poster is not right, but he's not entirely wrong either.
That said, I'm glad to hear that you're going to give Ubuntu a shot. It really is something else in terms of ease of use and ease of management, and it really does keep getting better with every release.
It certainly illustrates the diversity of the word. ;-)
Agreed.
The word you're looking for is probably orthogonal.
:-)
Normally I wouldn't bother with the vocabulary-naziism, but it's one of my favorite words.
The movie The Final Cut posits a similar world, where people are implanted with "Zoe" chips at birth that record everything they see and hear throughout their entire lives. When a person dies, the Zoe chip is extracted and given to a "cutter", whose job it is to turn all of those years of memories into a brief "highlight reel" for the bereaved to remember him by. It's actually a pretty good movie, even though it stars Robin Williams. Really, I promise. ;-)
So you want proprietary drivers and hardware that costs more?
:-P
Yes to the hardware, no to the drivers. I want Dell to assemble computers that already have pre-assembled and pre-tested Linux hardware configurations, with official drivers supported by the community, along with instructions inside. I also want a pony.
[...]and the "community" would cry their eyes out because their precious kernel was "tainted" by code that actually made Linux usable.
I'm under the impression that there exists at least one piece of hardware of pretty much every type that has decent, if not official, support by real drivers. What I want is a computer that has all of that hardware in it already, along with a list of what those drivers are. From that point, I could probably figure out how to get my distribution of choice running on the hardware.
[...]but Dell makes money by selling in volume at low, low prices. "Real" hardware would skew that[...]
As a large reseller, I'm pretty sure that Dell could purchase just about any component it wants in sufficient volume. If it decides to release a laptop line with non-Winmodems, for instance, I imagine they'd be able to find not a few vendors who would be willing to compete to supply them. As for the price issue, yes, the price would be a little more expensive, I'm sure, but I would personally consider it worthhwhile (and I would expect the price differential to be smaller than you'd think, with the removal of the Windows tax).
[...]I've been wondering what a distro would look like where every package was at least 1.0 or higher... Even Ubuntu with it's limited (but great) selection, many big pieces are still pre-1.0 versions.
At this very moment, I'm playing World of Warcraft with wine 0.9.32, which is not 1.0, but which serves me very well for what I'm trying to accomplish. It's all in how you look at it; there's lots of software out there at version 4 or what have you, that I wouldn't dare install on anything I cared about.
Although I know your reply is tongue-in-cheek, it is still a serious question.
;-)
I support several users who have to travel for business, and unfortunately, not every hotel offers ethernet or Wi-Fi in its rooms. While none of the users I support happen to use Linux, I'm sure that the problem exists for other IT folks in positions like mine.
And, even if I can't buy non-Winmodems at retail, I expect Dell has just a little more clout than I do when it comes to acquiring hardware.
What I want from Dell is a commitment to selling a machine with hardware that is supported by the community. No Winmodems, no ndiswrapper, but actual, tested, "we put this in a box together and it works like we think it does" hardware.
Past that, I couldn't possibly care less what distribution of Linux they throw on it. If it's a distribution I like and am willing to use, then more power to me. If not, "lsmod" and I'm off and installing the distribution of my choice. Either way, I'm golden.
I own a Dell Inspiron 4100, and I remember what a holy terror getting Linux to run on that machine was (with full hardware support). If I could buy a laptop from Dell with a piece of paper that says, "The network adapter uses the 'eepro100' driver," etc., then I would be a happy customer.
The kind of canonical article about SVN homedirs is this one: Subverting your homedir. I've got it set up between Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows, and it's pretty awesome.
Another example is here in a LUG's wiki. Also, if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer questions about my setup.
I suppose it's that whole living vicariously through the game, which is why we play RPG's in the first place.
:-)
See, now, when I started playing WoW, I created an Undead Warlock, just because I thought the idea of playing a skeleton riding around on a fiery horse sounded wicked cool.
To each his own.
I'm also a huge fan of my Squeezebox, and I thought I'd share a couple of tips with you.
If you have several SB2s, you can coordinate them all to play at the same time, so that you have synced music in several rooms or the whole house. [...] I'm not sure if units will sync from the remote or only from the web interface. I'm fairly sure you have to CREATE the sync via web browser, but I suspect it will probably just work from then on. I believe you'd hit play on any unit in a group, and they would all start playing.
The synchronization can be done from any Squeezebox connected to a given SlimServer, with any other Squeezebox(es) also connected to that SlimServer. They do behave as you expect, in that the "play" signal from any member of the group propagates to all of the other members. The synchronized Squeezeboxes also share playlists, though, so you can organize a playlist (or load a saved one) on one Squeezebox that all of them will then follow.
Also, the SlimServer software ships with a Java-based Squeezebox emulator called SoftSqueeze. Your SlimServer web interface should have a link to it somewhere; in the Default skin, it's down in the lower-left corner of the left-hand frame. This software can be used to turn virtually any computer (since it's Java and all) into another Squeezebox, which will then connect to the SlimServer and appear exactly like a hardware Squeezebox. The SoftSqueeze clients can even be synchronized with hardware players.
Have fun!
You're right; I misread the comment chain. I apologize.
Isn't that searching the files for "bar", not merely matching their names?
I think it searches in the file names only, since the "-name" option was specified.
What backup system do you have in place? I'd like to implement something like this at the place I just started, as opposed to the current procedure of "dumping the file server to a firewire drive whenever we remember to do so". =(
Tardis 2000 is a Windows service that implements the NTP protocol, both as a client and (optionally) as a server.
I love this thing, I've been running it for years.
I apologize in advance for responding to such a well-written and eloquent post in this fashion, but it must be said.
*ahem*
Owned. =)
This topic shows up about once a year, and I always make it a point to pimp my favorite productivity enhancer, GeoShell.
GeoShell is a shell replacement, which means it runs instead of your taskbar and start menu. You can easily replicate those if you really like them, but I much prefer the flexibility of having individually-docked "GeoBars", which are completely customizable. For instance, along the top of my screen I have a GeoBar showing all my drives for easy access, a GeoBar with system and network traffic monitors and a clock, and a GeoBar with my QuickLaunch folder. Add the GeoBar in the bottom-right corner for running tasks and the system tray, and I'm set. You can also create menus which can be triggered by GeoBar icons, mouse clicks, and even keyboard shortcuts, such as my running tasks menu (Win+T) and my QuickLaunch menu (Win+Q).
I apologize; I tend to ramble. Feel free to ignore what I was saying, but do go check out the Screenshots archive to see just how flexible and customizable you can get. =)
P.S.- If anybody knows of a window manager for Linux that affords this level of customization, please drop me a line. I've tried Kahakai, Fluxbox and XFCE, but none of them are quite what I'm looking for.