Not an asshole, an idiot. You see this shit going on and Blizzard lets it get in the way of your gaming experience. You blame the players, not the maker of the lame game. If Blizzard could figure out proper instancing (I will show them, yes I am *that* smart) you wouldn't be denied access to a resource because someone else is using it.
Hell, they could just try to write a game where you can't camp spawns, but no, much easier to blame the players.
How do you know those areas are crowded with gold sellers instead of just pushy guilds or demanding players who won't share? Perhaps if they could all just buy an item or two they wouldn't go insane when they miss their drop, ala Cloudsong.
Really, you're just proof that unhappy people can be made happy by giving them an opportunity to pick on the masses. You're the type who keeps IRC going, just hoping for ops to be able to control those rule-breakers... Just sit back and let other people play the game. They may have more adjectives on their magic weapon, they might emit a brighter glow, but your character remains unchanged and you should be able to continue having just as much fun as before without concerning yourself with them. After all, theoretically it's playing the game that's fun.
There's a prevailing legal belief that you can sell a service, then for any reason, refuse to provide that service...
As was mentioned, there may be an EULA forbidding certain actions, but it's not clear that a contract for use of a service can dictate your ability to charge money for an otherwise legal thing. Especially since the contract is one-sided and obviously from an unequal balance of power.
It's as silly as if a PvP game that decided talking to someone outside the game (icq, msn, voip, etc) was cheating and attempted to kick anyone who did it. They simply don't have the right to dictate who you communicate with and outside of certain competitions. To terminate someone's account for this reason is then theft and extortion. The gamer paid for the service, but it's being withheld unlawfully to enforce compliance in something outside the scope of a legal contract.
Blizzard has a history of releasing games that don't work due to copy protection and refusing to fix the issue. I discussed the issue (Diablo I think) with them, they suggested I buy a new CDROM (my burner was freaking it out), I suggested I crack the game. They told me I was breaking the law, I told them to try to sue me. Still no lawsuit so I can only assume they're liars about everything. Rather than letting me employ a work-around to make a game work, or provide a work-around on their own, they tried to scare me through baseless legal threats into giving up.
WOW seems like more of the same, but you pay on an ongoing basis... Besides, I use a debugger and other programming tools on a daily basis, they'd probably just terminate my service for hacking or something.
Nothing at all, it was just in reference to Linus referring to SVN/CVS users as stupid and ugly. I suspect that he means something like I do, "I disagree with you, but your understanding is so limited (knowledge or cultural familiarity) that you wouldn't understand why", so rather than actually discuss it I'll just blow it off.
The use of ugly was intended as a cue of the non-personal nature of that.
Look, it's censorship if you use netnanny to keep your toddler for viewing live war footage and hardcore fetish porn. It might be the right thing to do, but the act itself is one of censorship.
What's wrong with you people who insist on, "seeing shades of gray" in stuff that isn't? The word has a meaning, everyone else knows it, why don't you?
How about we design interfaces with exposed controls instead of having everything pop up when we mouse near it? Instead of having to sweep the mouse over everything to see what it did, it would instead just be obvious from looking at it.
Things that need to pop-up information can have hover-text and when clicked, pop up a javascript floater just like the hover-text.
Really the problem is that almost everyone making a Web2.0 interface is an idiot, and ugly. What user ever asked to have to mouse over a heading, often all of them, to find a sub-option? What user wants non-native UI popping up when merely moved past? If you think this stuff is in demand, you must use MySpace.
It will be refreshing to be able to look at an interface again and have it indicate its usability without me having to sweep the cursor over it like a bad '80s adventure game to highlight the active bits.
And as for 'dragging off', the device itself supports these features, the web page is only sent the actual click event if it isn't canceled.
The supreme court may overturn your sodomy charge, but that still seems like a lot of hassle for something you haven't lost the right to do.
Have I, during the course of my life, lost any freedoms due totally to the actions of a religious organization. Probably not much. But the society I'm in is much less free directly because of religion. Yes, their hold is slipping, but that's only because of people like me who realize their lack of value and nasty consequences and push for more separation of church and state. Otherwise they'd be in like cockroaches.
The same argument the USA is using against religious terrorists in the middle-east, that a true believer will do anything with no regard for reality, is all too appropriate for our own religious leaders. Can you really trust a leader who believes in an afterlife for the virtuous? To me, that sort of insanity is likely to get us all killed by someone who doesn't understand the permanence of death.
If you believe in a space ghost who rules the world, you aren't rational. If you're not rational, you have no business running anything with lives at stake.
That's just as bad in the other direction - then nobody can afford to sue anyone larger than them in case they'd lose.
I'd say that we should split costs, especially if one party is much larger than the other. Contribute an equal percentage of your total assets, split it down the middle.
The concept of the parties paying was so that society wouldn't have to foot another bill. Really it looks like that was a false savings. If we'd pay the costs up front and fine both parties according to guilt for what they can bear. My taxes would be higher, but I wouldn't be looking at bankruptcy as the only likely outcome from any lawsuit, warranted or otherwise, with a large corporation. As is, the courts are nearly useless to me against anyone much larger.
Yeah, you're going to afford a top-notch lawyer to represent you versus "Some Jerks on the Interweb!1!". Do you expect to make much from these starving students even if you could identify them and win your case?
Meanwhile you'll be counter-sued by the non-anonymous people like the system administrator for a bunch of things. These will delay your case, impede information gathering, make the original slander even more prevalent as part of the court documents, and cost you a fortune.
They'd all get off on the fact that even if you had an IP, and it was static, that a trojan web-proxy on his computer could have made him appear guilty.
And you think they'd come out of this looking like the unhireable idiots... at least realize that you'd be their king.
It's still illegal in many states to have kinky sex and you ask what freedoms are lost? Even if anal isn't your thing, post Janet Jackson the FCC is tightening down even more, leading to religious rules dictating what you can and can't see/hear.
Of course, the big loss that we're all not supposed to talk about is that without god-fearing GW Bush at the helm, we wouldn't be in a useless war and have killed half a million people. Oops.
Then, there's the government pressure against birth-control information, stem-cell research, etc...
Government is bad, religious government is treason.
Then the administrator files a bunch of procedural stuff, delaying your filing and eating up your costs. Meanwhile they counter-sue for defamation, harassment, etc. None of this goes anywhere, but it costs them about a tenth of what it costs you. They put up a tip jar on their website and make more in donations than your case is costing you, while displaying your legal documents and making subtle and mocking reference to the original issue.
In the end, you've blown $20k or more, they've made $10k, have a vastly expanded readership, have reached far more people with their original insults, and are almost assuredly not going to have to take the original page down, at least for many years.
Your job prospects won't look as rosy because everyone knows that some loser suing an anonymous guy on the internet is a retard. I mean, look at the hoops they're having to jump through. And for what? Debt and more shame. Which you've shown bothers you far beyond reason.
A requirement to identify yourself (show ID or even give your name) does make it easier to track your vote. I'm sure you've left fingerprints or something on your vote, knowing where you voted and when is all it would take to find the box (and roughly the right depth within the box).
But, current voting systems are subject to these same problems. The only way around is give everyone an untraceable vote token (having it is defacto right to vote it) and letting them cast it anywhere, unseen. But then you get into vote buying issues, etc. So you die people's fingers - and people get shot for voting at all, etc...
Here's a test. Write a believable death threat to the current president on your ballot. If you get arrested, they can tie votes to people. If not, well, maybe they're just watching you covertly.:)
Most countries have ignored the property rights of the original "owners" of their territory. The USA was "stolen" from Britain, which was stolen from the Indians, who stole it from other Indians, etc. Britain was stolen from its original owners by the celts, then the romans, then the normans, etc, etc.
Who has a rightful claim to something? Unless you denounce the USA, it must be the people who currently live there.
The colonial powers built the Suez canal, but it was nationalized because it was in another country and was built with their slaves.
Whose oil company was this? The "people" of Iran? Did people drive their trucks over to collect their share of the outputs, was there a profit sharing system for the people who inhabited the area the oil came from, and whose politics were destabilized by it?
It was a British oil company taken over by the people who were conquered by the British as they threw them off. As I said, you obviously support this stuff or you'd be speaking out against the USA - a much larger and earlier example of this.
I know you've got this funny definition of theft that most libertarians have. Taking anything you want is cool, no matter how many die. But, once someone has done that and put a sign on the door saying "I own this stuff", then disrupting that status quo in any way is theft.
Nobody on a truly open market was paid for the land the oil was on. The conquering country merely took through force of arms anything that it wanted. Maybe it legitimized this through token payments to a captive warlord, but the principle is the same. You'd call it theft if I took your car, even if I said that it was okay because I paid your neighbor $10 and he was fine with it.
In that sense, you'd feel that it wasn't theft when you went and got your car back. Much like it wasn't theft for Iran to take its oil back.
The problem is that the tax-and-spend party is the only one that doesn't want to make anal sex and abortion illegal, bring back prayer in school, etc.
I'd rather lose a bit more tax money (do you really need an HD TV?) than live in a country that limited what I could watch on my TV, read on my computer, etc.
You see the poor voting Dem to get a bit of your money.
I see you voting Repub to pay less, but selling everyone else out to a religious dictatorship.
In the end, I see the more liberal party being more open to commerce and trade, making everyone rich. The religious and conservative party would stymie us under centuries of nigh-unto-Sharia law and destroy our economic future.
In that, I think the Dems (with a few Libertarians who've fled to the part of religious freedom to keep them economically honest) are much more likely to leave us living in a world where we are rich. If you'd taken all the taxes my family would have paid in the last century, I could pay that in a year today, in "goods". And I'm not even that well to do, society is just that far ahead. But if we buy into the party of scientific blindness we'll be going overseas for our stem-cell cancer cures, etc.
Look at the long-term goals of the party you support.
That used to be the case, until a specific exemption was made. Section 117 of the US Copyright Act allows for temporary copies of a work that are necessary for the using the work in its intended manner. (And for backup purposes as well.)
In other words, software that runs from the HD can be installed to the HD. If it needs to be copied into RAM, it can be, etc.
And, you do *own* your copy of software. You're allowed to sell it.
The law in no way recognizes any of the rights software companies try to claim through the EULA, nor the power of the EULA. (Post-sale contracts.) Really, the only thing you can't do with your software is duplicate it for distribution, just like a book.
I'm still not sure what the problem is. At any point there are companies like IBM who contribute to open source because it suits their needs momentarily, and there are companies like Tivo who leech everything available. The IBMs will never go away - it will always be in many people's best interests to avoid monopolies, even if they didn't want the open source solution itself. They'll fund the Apaches and PostgreSQLs, if indeed, any funding is needed.
At some sign of difficulty in leeching, they will start to complain about leaving. It looks like users are leaving in droves but really it's just leeches falling off. The exact same number of real contributors remain.
And as for your poisoned food analogy, that's just daft. GPLed code can always be reimplemented to avoid any licensing issues - in fact with the GPLv3 using GPLed code will be safer because it will include a patent indemnity. Anything else, BSD, etc, is a patent land-mine waiting to happen. Further, code is only as important as food when you need it that badly - if you need it that badly, does it make sense to complain simply because you don't own 100% of something you wouldn't have had at all otherwise.
You can't overcome the basic facts. The GPL grants distribution rights, it doesn't even attempt to govern usage. It may grant less total rights, but is still far more free than almost any other license. Further, you can ignore the rampant growth of Linux and say that people really prefer the BSDL, but I think history shows otherwise.
How would lack of an EULA hurt a company like Gateway? I mean, a theoretical honest company that didn't appear to be lying to their customers shouldn't need some sort of extra-legal protection, should they?
No, they're fine from the minute your credit card verifies.
I've yet to tangle with Gateway, but AtBatt are criminals. I tried to order from them and after the order arrived heavily COD, when guaranteed to ship (cross border and all) for free, they tried to point me to a clause in their "legal terms" (small print on a different page) explaining how free didn't actually limit their ability to add charges post-sale. Too bad Visa isn't much use.
What part of post-sale conditions being by definition unreasonable, don't you understand?
Anyone who says a post-sale contract is good should die. If anything was really so expected as to truly not need to be said, it would already be the law.
People are putting Novel and Tivo into a position where they might be unable to continue using their business plans with future versions of a certain software package, unless they respect the distribution requirements.
I'm still not seeing how this is forcing.
I do GPL my software, but I don't see this *forcing* you to do anything. It doesn't force you to release GPLed patches, it allows you to release legal patches at all.
If I give you free food, am I forcing you to go hungry when I decline to share another meal with you unless you wash the dishes first?
You sound like a law student. How can a judge rule that a post-sale contract is valid and not get his ass kicked in the showers? This is the fundamental principle of contract law. If you make a contract, it can't be arbitrarily changed at a later date by one of the parties, to the detriment of the other.
Was this judge retarded? Bribed by Gateway?
Even if the EULA was valid, Gateway was selling something unfit for the purposes advertised, those being non-EULA reading.
Actually, reading the case it does make me think they were an idiot. The ruling talks about the unreasonability of reading a large license to someone over the phone and they take this to mean that because of this difficulty, nobody needs to be informed of contracts anymore. Maybe people wouldn't buy when they find their computer comes encumbered with totally unexpected legal crap. Either way, it seems like Gateway's problem if they insist on having non-standard terms of sale. But leave it to a judge to prop up an unreasonable method of business.
Then they talk about the Hill's willingness to let their warranty slide without looking up more info and how that meant that they respected Gateway's ongoing interest in the transaction. Idiot again. They paid and could reasonably be able to expect to get the same warranty as other Gateway customers - or find out via an internet forum. Consumer protection laws mean that you don't have to read the fine print to get the right to exchange a lemon. In fact, usually you can't sell something expected not to work (and not be expected to take it back), unless it's clearly marked as unworking.
It's just fucking stupid. A sale ends at acceptance of payment and delivery. There may be more requirements (making good on lemon replacements - following federal law with regards to use of the products, etc) but those aren't part of the sale.
Who cares? Unless they faxed one out while he was on the phone, it's not binding. He agreed to buy a computer, not buy a computer and be bound by some weird contract.
Gateway. You lie. EULAs aren't valid and your legal staff know this. Fucking criminals.
Pressure tactics? Stallman is trying to make *you* use the GPLv3? Or just suggest that in-his-o everyone should? All of my v2 code seems fine. Is he going to remotely disable it?
As for "...being forced into using GPLv3 software...", do you honestly think users need to even know about the GPL?
The GPL is a distribution license, no user ever has to ever know about it, let alone read it.
Sure, some business models won't have a well defined or plausible profit stream. That might lead financially restricted people with a short-term goal to pass those business ideas over for others.
That's why buggy whips have been largely replaced by cars, but flying cars (who would buy, licensing issues, etc) haven't replaced cars. Eventually cars will fly, when road space costs more than the societal costs of flying cars.
Maybe there's no non-legally-abusive business strategy that makes on-spec development of new seed strains profitable. We might have to wait a while for a better economic climate, or maybe some client will pay for the development, thus avoiding the need for the on-spec delivery and the terminator code. Many countries or huge farming companies could potentially fund the work. If you're China feeding your people is primary, that a few other countries also get cheaper food is likely immaterial, or good PR.
When you're doing heavy webserving, do you want IIS or Apache? Apache only has code to make it work, on an OS designed to make it work. IIS has code to disable it, as does the OS. If your licensing doesn't look valid, if you get too many IP connections at once, have too many CPUs, etc. Percentage of code you don't want: IIS Some%, Apache 0%. All the extra cost to develop, all the extra cost to use and track: IIS: $Lots, Apache: $0.
That's a pretty messed up business model. Think of the waste going into the terminator code (genetic or otherwise) in modern DRMed products and all the costs related. Might be that it just isn't reasonable to make money there, no matter what your lawyer says about the viability of any given case.
Tell you what. I'm going to infect you with spyware and then charge you for piracy. That's Monsanto.
The seeds ended up in his land. Only an immense idiot would rule that picking patented fruit from your own land was illegal. (Or, a federal judge with a new sailboat.)
Besides, there are two things the patent could be on. #1 the plant's roundup resistant techniques or #2 how to make the plant thus resistant.
I say #1 is a joke because it's the plants that developed the techniques. Gene patents on this sort of technology are like someone patenting Pi. They didn't make it, merely document it. These patents seem new and novel now, but are ultimately fluff and will be overturned by competitors once the industry is a little more documented.
But #2 is reasonable, because you take a plant not like X and make it like X.
This leaves the actual genetic techniques for the farmer to really have infringed on. But, obviously he couldn't have done that. The technique of selecting a crop or culture via weak poisons is not patentable either, as there are a few thousand years of prior art.
So, what's his actual crime? As the real world, not a lawyer, would see it. None. Seeds blew onto his land, he liked their taste and traits and let them grow.
It's not a crime for me to find your castoffs useful. Build a fence if you don't want to lose anything.
It may be a serial killer's "job" to kill, but that doesn't mean I won't shoot one if he breaks into my house.
Anti-social behavior is anti-social. It might not be a common-enough form to have a law against it, but if someone makes their living by making it harder for other people to make theirs, maybe we should all just go take their money away? I mean, why not? If Monsanto steals that farmer's crop in court, why shouldn't we just take their patent away and, if we like the product, nationalize it? If it happens again, take the board member's stuff as well.
I'm an owner of an incorporated business and I favor piercing the corporate veil at *all* levels. Crimes and anti-social actions shouldn't be tolerated from an incorporated company any more than by criminals.
Slashdot Mirror
Not an asshole, an idiot. You see this shit going on and Blizzard lets it get in the way of your gaming experience. You blame the players, not the maker of the lame game. If Blizzard could figure out proper instancing (I will show them, yes I am *that* smart) you wouldn't be denied access to a resource because someone else is using it.
Hell, they could just try to write a game where you can't camp spawns, but no, much easier to blame the players.
How do you know those areas are crowded with gold sellers instead of just pushy guilds or demanding players who won't share? Perhaps if they could all just buy an item or two they wouldn't go insane when they miss their drop, ala Cloudsong.
Really, you're just proof that unhappy people can be made happy by giving them an opportunity to pick on the masses. You're the type who keeps IRC going, just hoping for ops to be able to control those rule-breakers... Just sit back and let other people play the game. They may have more adjectives on their magic weapon, they might emit a brighter glow, but your character remains unchanged and you should be able to continue having just as much fun as before without concerning yourself with them. After all, theoretically it's playing the game that's fun.
Enjoy your second daily grind.
There's a prevailing legal belief that you can sell a service, then for any reason, refuse to provide that service...
As was mentioned, there may be an EULA forbidding certain actions, but it's not clear that a contract for use of a service can dictate your ability to charge money for an otherwise legal thing. Especially since the contract is one-sided and obviously from an unequal balance of power.
It's as silly as if a PvP game that decided talking to someone outside the game (icq, msn, voip, etc) was cheating and attempted to kick anyone who did it. They simply don't have the right to dictate who you communicate with and outside of certain competitions. To terminate someone's account for this reason is then theft and extortion. The gamer paid for the service, but it's being withheld unlawfully to enforce compliance in something outside the scope of a legal contract.
Blizzard has a history of releasing games that don't work due to copy protection and refusing to fix the issue. I discussed the issue (Diablo I think) with them, they suggested I buy a new CDROM (my burner was freaking it out), I suggested I crack the game. They told me I was breaking the law, I told them to try to sue me. Still no lawsuit so I can only assume they're liars about everything. Rather than letting me employ a work-around to make a game work, or provide a work-around on their own, they tried to scare me through baseless legal threats into giving up.
WOW seems like more of the same, but you pay on an ongoing basis... Besides, I use a debugger and other programming tools on a daily basis, they'd probably just terminate my service for hacking or something.
Nothing at all, it was just in reference to Linus referring to SVN/CVS users as stupid and ugly. I suspect that he means something like I do, "I disagree with you, but your understanding is so limited (knowledge or cultural familiarity) that you wouldn't understand why", so rather than actually discuss it I'll just blow it off.
The use of ugly was intended as a cue of the non-personal nature of that.
You can, but you'd be wrong.
Look, it's censorship if you use netnanny to keep your toddler for viewing live war footage and hardcore fetish porn. It might be the right thing to do, but the act itself is one of censorship.
What's wrong with you people who insist on, "seeing shades of gray" in stuff that isn't? The word has a meaning, everyone else knows it, why don't you?
How about we design interfaces with exposed controls instead of having everything pop up when we mouse near it? Instead of having to sweep the mouse over everything to see what it did, it would instead just be obvious from looking at it.
Things that need to pop-up information can have hover-text and when clicked, pop up a javascript floater just like the hover-text.
Really the problem is that almost everyone making a Web2.0 interface is an idiot, and ugly. What user ever asked to have to mouse over a heading, often all of them, to find a sub-option? What user wants non-native UI popping up when merely moved past? If you think this stuff is in demand, you must use MySpace.
It will be refreshing to be able to look at an interface again and have it indicate its usability without me having to sweep the cursor over it like a bad '80s adventure game to highlight the active bits.
And as for 'dragging off', the device itself supports these features, the web page is only sent the actual click event if it isn't canceled.
The supreme court may overturn your sodomy charge, but that still seems like a lot of hassle for something you haven't lost the right to do.
Have I, during the course of my life, lost any freedoms due totally to the actions of a religious organization. Probably not much. But the society I'm in is much less free directly because of religion. Yes, their hold is slipping, but that's only because of people like me who realize their lack of value and nasty consequences and push for more separation of church and state. Otherwise they'd be in like cockroaches.
The same argument the USA is using against religious terrorists in the middle-east, that a true believer will do anything with no regard for reality, is all too appropriate for our own religious leaders. Can you really trust a leader who believes in an afterlife for the virtuous? To me, that sort of insanity is likely to get us all killed by someone who doesn't understand the permanence of death.
If you believe in a space ghost who rules the world, you aren't rational. If you're not rational, you have no business running anything with lives at stake.
That's just as bad in the other direction - then nobody can afford to sue anyone larger than them in case they'd lose.
I'd say that we should split costs, especially if one party is much larger than the other. Contribute an equal percentage of your total assets, split it down the middle.
The concept of the parties paying was so that society wouldn't have to foot another bill. Really it looks like that was a false savings. If we'd pay the costs up front and fine both parties according to guilt for what they can bear. My taxes would be higher, but I wouldn't be looking at bankruptcy as the only likely outcome from any lawsuit, warranted or otherwise, with a large corporation. As is, the courts are nearly useless to me against anyone much larger.
Yeah, you're going to afford a top-notch lawyer to represent you versus "Some Jerks on the Interweb!1!". Do you expect to make much from these starving students even if you could identify them and win your case?
Meanwhile you'll be counter-sued by the non-anonymous people like the system administrator for a bunch of things. These will delay your case, impede information gathering, make the original slander even more prevalent as part of the court documents, and cost you a fortune.
They'd all get off on the fact that even if you had an IP, and it was static, that a trojan web-proxy on his computer could have made him appear guilty.
And you think they'd come out of this looking like the unhireable idiots... at least realize that you'd be their king.
It's still illegal in many states to have kinky sex and you ask what freedoms are lost? Even if anal isn't your thing, post Janet Jackson the FCC is tightening down even more, leading to religious rules dictating what you can and can't see/hear.
Of course, the big loss that we're all not supposed to talk about is that without god-fearing GW Bush at the helm, we wouldn't be in a useless war and have killed half a million people. Oops.
Then, there's the government pressure against birth-control information, stem-cell research, etc...
Government is bad, religious government is treason.
Then the administrator files a bunch of procedural stuff, delaying your filing and eating up your costs. Meanwhile they counter-sue for defamation, harassment, etc. None of this goes anywhere, but it costs them about a tenth of what it costs you. They put up a tip jar on their website and make more in donations than your case is costing you, while displaying your legal documents and making subtle and mocking reference to the original issue.
In the end, you've blown $20k or more, they've made $10k, have a vastly expanded readership, have reached far more people with their original insults, and are almost assuredly not going to have to take the original page down, at least for many years.
Your job prospects won't look as rosy because everyone knows that some loser suing an anonymous guy on the internet is a retard. I mean, look at the hoops they're having to jump through. And for what? Debt and more shame. Which you've shown bothers you far beyond reason.
A requirement to identify yourself (show ID or even give your name) does make it easier to track your vote. I'm sure you've left fingerprints or something on your vote, knowing where you voted and when is all it would take to find the box (and roughly the right depth within the box).
:)
But, current voting systems are subject to these same problems. The only way around is give everyone an untraceable vote token (having it is defacto right to vote it) and letting them cast it anywhere, unseen. But then you get into vote buying issues, etc. So you die people's fingers - and people get shot for voting at all, etc...
Here's a test. Write a believable death threat to the current president on your ballot. If you get arrested, they can tie votes to people. If not, well, maybe they're just watching you covertly.
Most countries have ignored the property rights of the original "owners" of their territory. The USA was "stolen" from Britain, which was stolen from the Indians, who stole it from other Indians, etc. Britain was stolen from its original owners by the celts, then the romans, then the normans, etc, etc.
Who has a rightful claim to something? Unless you denounce the USA, it must be the people who currently live there.
The colonial powers built the Suez canal, but it was nationalized because it was in another country and was built with their slaves.
Whose oil company was this? The "people" of Iran? Did people drive their trucks over to collect their share of the outputs, was there a profit sharing system for the people who inhabited the area the oil came from, and whose politics were destabilized by it?
It was a British oil company taken over by the people who were conquered by the British as they threw them off. As I said, you obviously support this stuff or you'd be speaking out against the USA - a much larger and earlier example of this.
I know you've got this funny definition of theft that most libertarians have. Taking anything you want is cool, no matter how many die. But, once someone has done that and put a sign on the door saying "I own this stuff", then disrupting that status quo in any way is theft.
Nobody on a truly open market was paid for the land the oil was on. The conquering country merely took through force of arms anything that it wanted. Maybe it legitimized this through token payments to a captive warlord, but the principle is the same. You'd call it theft if I took your car, even if I said that it was okay because I paid your neighbor $10 and he was fine with it.
In that sense, you'd feel that it wasn't theft when you went and got your car back. Much like it wasn't theft for Iran to take its oil back.
The problem is that the tax-and-spend party is the only one that doesn't want to make anal sex and abortion illegal, bring back prayer in school, etc.
I'd rather lose a bit more tax money (do you really need an HD TV?) than live in a country that limited what I could watch on my TV, read on my computer, etc.
You see the poor voting Dem to get a bit of your money.
I see you voting Repub to pay less, but selling everyone else out to a religious dictatorship.
In the end, I see the more liberal party being more open to commerce and trade, making everyone rich. The religious and conservative party would stymie us under centuries of nigh-unto-Sharia law and destroy our economic future.
In that, I think the Dems (with a few Libertarians who've fled to the part of religious freedom to keep them economically honest) are much more likely to leave us living in a world where we are rich. If you'd taken all the taxes my family would have paid in the last century, I could pay that in a year today, in "goods". And I'm not even that well to do, society is just that far ahead. But if we buy into the party of scientific blindness we'll be going overseas for our stem-cell cancer cures, etc.
Look at the long-term goals of the party you support.
That used to be the case, until a specific exemption was made. Section 117 of the US Copyright Act allows for temporary copies of a work that are necessary for the using the work in its intended manner. (And for backup purposes as well.)
In other words, software that runs from the HD can be installed to the HD. If it needs to be copied into RAM, it can be, etc.
And, you do *own* your copy of software. You're allowed to sell it.
The law in no way recognizes any of the rights software companies try to claim through the EULA, nor the power of the EULA. (Post-sale contracts.) Really, the only thing you can't do with your software is duplicate it for distribution, just like a book.
I'm still not sure what the problem is. At any point there are companies like IBM who contribute to open source because it suits their needs momentarily, and there are companies like Tivo who leech everything available. The IBMs will never go away - it will always be in many people's best interests to avoid monopolies, even if they didn't want the open source solution itself. They'll fund the Apaches and PostgreSQLs, if indeed, any funding is needed.
At some sign of difficulty in leeching, they will start to complain about leaving. It looks like users are leaving in droves but really it's just leeches falling off. The exact same number of real contributors remain.
And as for your poisoned food analogy, that's just daft. GPLed code can always be reimplemented to avoid any licensing issues - in fact with the GPLv3 using GPLed code will be safer because it will include a patent indemnity. Anything else, BSD, etc, is a patent land-mine waiting to happen. Further, code is only as important as food when you need it that badly - if you need it that badly, does it make sense to complain simply because you don't own 100% of something you wouldn't have had at all otherwise.
You can't overcome the basic facts. The GPL grants distribution rights, it doesn't even attempt to govern usage. It may grant less total rights, but is still far more free than almost any other license. Further, you can ignore the rampant growth of Linux and say that people really prefer the BSDL, but I think history shows otherwise.
How would lack of an EULA hurt a company like Gateway? I mean, a theoretical honest company that didn't appear to be lying to their customers shouldn't need some sort of extra-legal protection, should they?
No, they're fine from the minute your credit card verifies.
I've yet to tangle with Gateway, but AtBatt are criminals. I tried to order from them and after the order arrived heavily COD, when guaranteed to ship (cross border and all) for free, they tried to point me to a clause in their "legal terms" (small print on a different page) explaining how free didn't actually limit their ability to add charges post-sale. Too bad Visa isn't much use.
What part of post-sale conditions being by definition unreasonable, don't you understand?
Anyone who says a post-sale contract is good should die. If anything was really so expected as to truly not need to be said, it would already be the law.
People are putting Novel and Tivo into a position where they might be unable to continue using their business plans with future versions of a certain software package, unless they respect the distribution requirements.
I'm still not seeing how this is forcing.
I do GPL my software, but I don't see this *forcing* you to do anything. It doesn't force you to release GPLed patches, it allows you to release legal patches at all.
If I give you free food, am I forcing you to go hungry when I decline to share another meal with you unless you wash the dishes first?
You sound like a law student. How can a judge rule that a post-sale contract is valid and not get his ass kicked in the showers? This is the fundamental principle of contract law. If you make a contract, it can't be arbitrarily changed at a later date by one of the parties, to the detriment of the other.
Was this judge retarded? Bribed by Gateway?
Even if the EULA was valid, Gateway was selling something unfit for the purposes advertised, those being non-EULA reading.
Actually, reading the case it does make me think they were an idiot. The ruling talks about the unreasonability of reading a large license to someone over the phone and they take this to mean that because of this difficulty, nobody needs to be informed of contracts anymore. Maybe people wouldn't buy when they find their computer comes encumbered with totally unexpected legal crap. Either way, it seems like Gateway's problem if they insist on having non-standard terms of sale. But leave it to a judge to prop up an unreasonable method of business.
Then they talk about the Hill's willingness to let their warranty slide without looking up more info and how that meant that they respected Gateway's ongoing interest in the transaction. Idiot again. They paid and could reasonably be able to expect to get the same warranty as other Gateway customers - or find out via an internet forum. Consumer protection laws mean that you don't have to read the fine print to get the right to exchange a lemon. In fact, usually you can't sell something expected not to work (and not be expected to take it back), unless it's clearly marked as unworking.
It's just fucking stupid. A sale ends at acceptance of payment and delivery. There may be more requirements (making good on lemon replacements - following federal law with regards to use of the products, etc) but those aren't part of the sale.
Who was the judge that returned this decision?
Who cares? Unless they faxed one out while he was on the phone, it's not binding. He agreed to buy a computer, not buy a computer and be bound by some weird contract.
Gateway. You lie. EULAs aren't valid and your legal staff know this. Fucking criminals.
Pressure tactics? Stallman is trying to make *you* use the GPLv3? Or just suggest that in-his-o everyone should? All of my v2 code seems fine. Is he going to remotely disable it?
As for "...being forced into using GPLv3 software...", do you honestly think users need to even know about the GPL?
The GPL is a distribution license, no user ever has to ever know about it, let alone read it.
Sure, some business models won't have a well defined or plausible profit stream. That might lead financially restricted people with a short-term goal to pass those business ideas over for others.
That's why buggy whips have been largely replaced by cars, but flying cars (who would buy, licensing issues, etc) haven't replaced cars. Eventually cars will fly, when road space costs more than the societal costs of flying cars.
Maybe there's no non-legally-abusive business strategy that makes on-spec development of new seed strains profitable. We might have to wait a while for a better economic climate, or maybe some client will pay for the development, thus avoiding the need for the on-spec delivery and the terminator code. Many countries or huge farming companies could potentially fund the work. If you're China feeding your people is primary, that a few other countries also get cheaper food is likely immaterial, or good PR.
When you're doing heavy webserving, do you want IIS or Apache? Apache only has code to make it work, on an OS designed to make it work. IIS has code to disable it, as does the OS. If your licensing doesn't look valid, if you get too many IP connections at once, have too many CPUs, etc. Percentage of code you don't want: IIS Some%, Apache 0%. All the extra cost to develop, all the extra cost to use and track: IIS: $Lots, Apache: $0.
That's a pretty messed up business model. Think of the waste going into the terminator code (genetic or otherwise) in modern DRMed products and all the costs related. Might be that it just isn't reasonable to make money there, no matter what your lawyer says about the viability of any given case.
Tell you what. I'm going to infect you with spyware and then charge you for piracy. That's Monsanto.
The seeds ended up in his land. Only an immense idiot would rule that picking patented fruit from your own land was illegal. (Or, a federal judge with a new sailboat.)
Besides, there are two things the patent could be on. #1 the plant's roundup resistant techniques or #2 how to make the plant thus resistant.
I say #1 is a joke because it's the plants that developed the techniques. Gene patents on this sort of technology are like someone patenting Pi. They didn't make it, merely document it. These patents seem new and novel now, but are ultimately fluff and will be overturned by competitors once the industry is a little more documented.
But #2 is reasonable, because you take a plant not like X and make it like X.
This leaves the actual genetic techniques for the farmer to really have infringed on. But, obviously he couldn't have done that. The technique of selecting a crop or culture via weak poisons is not patentable either, as there are a few thousand years of prior art.
So, what's his actual crime? As the real world, not a lawyer, would see it. None. Seeds blew onto his land, he liked their taste and traits and let them grow.
It's not a crime for me to find your castoffs useful. Build a fence if you don't want to lose anything.
It may be a serial killer's "job" to kill, but that doesn't mean I won't shoot one if he breaks into my house.
Anti-social behavior is anti-social. It might not be a common-enough form to have a law against it, but if someone makes their living by making it harder for other people to make theirs, maybe we should all just go take their money away? I mean, why not? If Monsanto steals that farmer's crop in court, why shouldn't we just take their patent away and, if we like the product, nationalize it? If it happens again, take the board member's stuff as well.
I'm an owner of an incorporated business and I favor piercing the corporate veil at *all* levels. Crimes and anti-social actions shouldn't be tolerated from an incorporated company any more than by criminals.