Maybe you have a firewall blocking the torrent ports? IIRC, if the other clients cant connect to your torrent ports that's what will happen to your rates.
Imagine if you spent a year of your life developing a new task scheduling algorithm. You incurred expenses, etc because you were inventing and developing rather than working a 9-5 job. You donate this to Linux and the community loves you.
Then Microsoft says "Hey, that's our idea". They didn't develop it. They just patented the concept.
Nothing offers any protection here.
If you think of something neat, chances are someone will come after you and drag you through court for the rest of your money and your life, claiming they own what you invented.
What motivation does that give anyone to invent anything or develop anything?
Tocqueville blames the rivers, oceans and rain for the devaluation of the 'liquid assets' of water bottling companies.
Many of the companies in the bottled water industry have invested heavily in, well, water. If the availability of free water is allowed to continue these assets are not worth as much as they could be.
Tocqueville now recommends that the oceans, rivers and lakes be drained in order to build a huge and thriving industry around limiting the availability of water. Combined with legal measures like outlawing other sources of water, and turning off tap water, as well as forbidding private wells this would create a massive amount of wealth in the US. The economic slump could be dealt with in one swift stroke.
Tocqueville would also like to call attention to their upcoming reports on the availability of free air, beer, speech and life, and how the economy could benefit from some other new measures.
Maybe it's because they'd have to increase the support contract costs to cover a higher incidence of serious filesystem related problems?
ReiserFS is nice, but it's not even close to corporate production stability.
Datacorruption issues are what keeps people working extended rotating shifts for days until they get stressrelated breakdowns in corporate environments.
Performance issues are what keeps people working normal days mulling interesting issues and eventually deciding to throw hardware at the problem.
And, of course, the conclusion is also utterly wrong.
Overall, one should choose the best filesystem based upon the properties of the files they are dealing with for the best performance possible _with the stability requirements that one has_.
Most distributions dont ship with ext3 as default because it's fast (and to anyone who's seen a benchmark of Linux filesystems since forever, this should not come as a surprise).
They ship with ext3 as default because it causes the fewest screams of anguish from their users due to crashes, panics, bugs or dataloss.
My apologies for being snippish. I appear to be a bit short-tempered today.
"Very thought provoking stuff."
One realizes that there's so much of the history of these conflicts that isnt hidden, it's just rarely mentioned, and disappears from the understanding of the conflicts.
"(Arab terrorists today may look at that victory as inspiration to keep up their attacks)"
Yeah, unfortunately, that's at the very least plausible.
"And from what I've seen many of the Israeli people are very unhappy with that situation and are working to bring these people before a court of law to stand trial for their crimes."
Um, like the ones bombing innocent civilans in a marketplace in Haifa? Bombing embassies? Throwing grenades into cafes?
No, wait, they were lead by Menachem Begin, and he got to be prime minister, not brought in front of a court of law.
Face it, the Palestinians and Israeli both have pretty horrific pasts and present. There were several pre-Israeli state groups who had no compunctions whatsoever about targetting innocent civilians. Oh, and those groups later got integrated into the Israeli military.
It's hopeless and pointless to assign any form of moral high ground to either side. If you wish to think about that conflict in terms of deserving this or deserving that, you've already failed.
That certainly is a boon to my world domination plans tho. I'm looking forward to the lack of uproar as the Znork for Lifelong Dictator option gets 100% of the votes.
"You, as a CS graduate, know why you want to use a linked list or a hash table, given the circumstances."
Of course, if someone wasn't a CS graduate they'd have picked that one up one chapter into an O'Reilly algorithm book. It's not like it's a very hard or complicated concept to grasp.
The relevant programming skills taught in CS are readily available in much more palatable form, so if you're only interested in learning programming it's not what you should be studying.
That's always the excuse for any subject that gets criticised as a timewaster. Once it gets hard to defend it's always really about something else.
If the point really is to teach thinking, why not develop teaching methods and subjects that would be far more efficient at teaching that? Why not teach 'critical thinking', 'memorization techniques', 'problem solving', 'logic' and other general approaches instead of subjecting the impressionable young minds to subjects that many find boring and pointless (critiques with a certain level of validity too), and are likely to turn them off from learning at all?
Teaching kids to think by teaching them math is like teaching them to cook by setting fire to them. It may get the general concept of crisping meat across, but it's a bit painful and not quite to the point.
"2.6 kernel performance with MySql should prompt many to upgrade, but it doesn't."
That's because a lot of us enterprise users frankly dont really care that much if there's improved preformance with MySql. One doesnt get called in to work in the middle of the night because they need a speed increase. One gets called in to work because the server is down. That means we tend to have as priority that the server is up. Which tends to cause a certain reluctance as far as installing 'new' code goes. If there's a performance problem on the scale where a new kernel might make a difference, I'd suggest throwing hardware at the problem. It's much easier, far cheaper, and offers much more peaceful sleeptime.
2.6 will get deployed in production when hardware is certified with it, when distributions are certified with it, when Oracle is certified with those distributions, when backup and monitoring software are certified with them, when we've run it ourselves in labs, and internal utilities are ported and/or recompiled and ready for deployment.
That'll take at least a year. Until then I'll play with it on my free time, and on my workstation. But hell, while I might be running my own driver code in my kernel at home, I wouldnt even be compiling a new kernel for a production machine unless there were _serious_ issues with the one from the vendor. It's just not worth the potential hassle.
Re-read section 5 again. Especially the part that says:
"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License."
That means, you only need to accept the terms of the GPL if you intend to do anything specifically forbidden by copyright law. That means it's entirely dependent on copyright law, and the GPL does not purport to be enforcable or binding unless you wish to engage in otherwise illegal activities.
Of course, as the GPL tries to be valid and stable in pretty much every jurisdiction on earth, it can hardly quote every possible condition under which you may, or may not, copy, modify and distribute the work in question under your specific jurisdictions copyright law, which means the language describing the conditions under which you have to accept the license is necessarily very generic. If you're interested in only modifying the work, without distributing it, you need to research the extent to which your local law permits modification of copyrighted material for personal use.
However, in cases such as Softman vs. Adobe, this is part of what the court found:
"The Court finds that the circumstances surrounding the transaction strongly suggests that the transaction is in fact a sale rather than a license. For example, the purchaser commonly obtains a single copy of the software, with documentation, for a single price, which the purchaser pays at the time of the transaction, and which constitutes the entire payment for the "license." The license runs for an indefinite term without provisions for renewal. In light of these indicia, many courts and commentators conclude that a "shrinkwrap license" transaction is a sale of goods rather than a license."
Further the court cites from VWP of Am., Inc. v. United States, 175 F.3d 1327, 1338-39 (Fed. Cir. 1999). Professor Raymond Nimmer,
"Ownership of a copy should be determined based on the actual character, rather than the label, of the transaction by which the user obtained possession. Merely labeling a transaction as a lease or license does not control. If a transaction involves a single payment giving the buyer an unlimited period in which it has a right to possession, the transaction is a sale. In this situation, the buyer owns the copy regardless of the label the parties use for the contract. Course of dealing and trade usage may be relevant, since they establish the expectations and intent of the parties. The pertinent issue is whether, as in a lease, the user may be required to return the copy to the vendor after the expiration of a particular period. If not, the transaction conveyed not only possession, but also transferred ownership of the copy."
This is also supported by Jobs comments about the users 'owning' what they download off iTMS.
In the Softman vs. Adobe, the EULA is also deemed unenforcable due to lack of agreement on Softmans part, which makes the case irrelevant as far as wether Apples contract is enforcable or not.
However, to quote yet another bit:
"The Court finds that the provisions contained in Adobe's EULA purport to diminish the rights of customers to use the software in ways ordinarily enjoyed by customers under copyright law. Therefore, these restrictions appear to be inconsistent with the balance of rights set forth in intellectual property law. Commentators have noted that the arguments for enforcing this balance are particularly persuasive in the context of shrinkwrap licenses because the balance of rights in intellectual property law is already tilted heavily in favor of the intellectual property owner. "The only countervailing forces favoring users are those rights specifically granted to users by federal law. In this context more than any other, therefore, it is justifiable to fear that removing or eviscerating those user rights may bring the whole edifice crumbling down."
This indicates that the court finds many reasons, even beside the issue of the EULA's validity as a contract, to vacate it.
No, not in any way. You can use GPL code any way you wish. The GPL does not cover usage. The GPL covers distribution.
"Oh, so as long as I'm just doing large-scale copying for FREE, then it's okay?"
No, that would be covered by the same laws as GPL violations. Free, for profit, it doesnt matter. That's forbidden by copyright law. That's _distribution_. Large-scale, or small scale, as long as you copy and distribute, it's forbidden (unless it falls under certain other legal exceptions). That would also be comparable.
EULA's attempt restrict what you are allowed to do with your legally purchased copy by using _contract_ law. Under copyright law you're allowed to do whatever you wish with a copy you have purchased (except make copies and distribute). That's the first sale doctrine. You can paint it blue, sell it second hand, or make origami of it, if you wish to. Most EULAs will try to say that you're specifically forbidden to paint this blue, sell it second hand, criticise the contents or play it in your nephews stereo. Things that copyright law allows you to do. That's why EULA's can get trumped by other laws, like consumer laws, other sections of copyright law, etc. Contracts can be invalidated in court, should they contain clauses that are unreasonable, or plainly not legal.
Copyright law, while it does permit people to do pretty much whatever they want to a copy they've legally purchased, does not permit anyone to make copies of copyrighted material. That's where the GPL comes into play. The GPL is the permission you need to be able to make the copies. The same way Apple needs permission from the copyright owners to distribute music through iTMS. The same way a publisher needs permission from a writer to copy and distribute books.
The GPL, and the publishers contract with the writer, or Apples contract with the music owners are necessary to permit them to do things they're explicitly not allowed to do without permission under copyright law. It's illegal unless you have permission.
These are entirely different aspects of law. EULA's attempt to restrict what you're legally allowed to do through contracts. Permission contracts/licenses allow you to do something that is otherwise illegal.
You're not allowed to copy and distribute iTMS content, but Apple wouldn't need an EULA for that. It's already illegal under copyright law. But the EULA also tries to say you can only use the products on three Apple authorized computers. This goes against the first sales doctrine, and as such, could very well be overturned in court. Traditionally, you legally own the copy you have purchased, you can play it on any (single) computer you wish, wether Apple wants to authorize that computer or not. Further, they want to restrict you from attempting to modify or circumvent the security technology. Again, this is a very dubious clause. The DMCA may, or may not, forbid that in law in this case, but it would be questionable if it was enforcable as an EULA clause. Further, they attempt to claim that any use of the product not allowed in the Usage Agreement may be a copyright infringement. That is pure unadulterated bullshit. Any _copying_ of the product not allowed in the usage agreement may be a copyright infringement, but _use_ is never a copyright infringement. It _may_ be a contract violation, but that's a vastly different thing. Etc.
Sigh. For the billionth time, the GPL is not an EULA. The GPL is a copyright permission license. To violate the GPL you have to be engaging in distribution.
It would be the 'Same deal as GPL violators' if someone set up their own webshop, copied and sold iTMS content.
EULA's may, or may not, be enforcable. It's by no means a certain thing, and in the case of Apples EULA for iTMS it goes straight up against the First Sales Doctrine, which means that copyright law can very well trump the contract EULA trying to limit buyers rights beyond what copyright law permits them.
"In my mind they aren't High Performance Computers... they are High Performance Clusters of Commodity Computers."
Well, neither are Crays machines really. They're just High Performance Clusters of slightly-better-than-off-the-shelf interconnected Commodity Computers.
It's just that 'our bus is better than ethernet' doesnt sound quite as cool as 'ours are the only _real_ HPCs'.
Sure, their (and many others) bus is faster. Today. It used to be faster yesterday too. But the off the shelf stuff is as fast today as theirs was yesterday. It's a scale that changes all the time, which makes it pointless to measure any definition of 'HPC' by the interconnect speed. Or didnt they make 'real' HPCs when they had 1Gb bus speeds?
If he wants to make a valid comparison he would do well to specify the type of load where his systems actually outperform commodity clusters, because there certainly is such load.
"Patents allow me to profit (horrors! evil profit!) from my years of work without needing to be quite so concerned about being ripped off."
You mistake software patents for other patents.
The way software patents work is that when you've finished with your years of work you'll first get sued by several dozens of IP holding companies as your several years of work happens to include several hundred 'ten minute brainstorm' patents.
Then, when you're at the tradeshow, still reeling, the Microsoft representative comes over and says "Heard about your recent legal troubles (tee-hee). Not to rain on your parade, but I see your product has clickable buttons. We have a patent on clickable buttons. I also see you use the color 'grey'. We have a patent on using the color 'grey' in GUI's. Now, sign over your company to us, and we'll give you a donut for your trouble. Or we'll see you in court. For the rest of your remaining life."
You see, the kind of company you're describing is _exactly_ the kind that will be hurt the most.
The ones who gain from software patents are small lawsuit companies who never have any intention of developing anything (or they could be countersued, and would have to cross-license). They'll just buy, or make up, junk patents to generate a minefield and then go fish.
And the other kind of companies who gain from software patents are giants who want to kill off competition in yet another way. They can also generate minefield type junk patents, and then drag any potential small competitor into court and kill them off by a war of legal attrition.
Software patents dont protect you from getting ripped off. They guarantee you will get a new orifice ripped for you, and then you'll get ripped off anyway.
The VM is verified inescapable. The host box does not have to be 'secure' (from the point of trying to hack the host from the VM), it just must not be connected to the external network. Take a physical machine on your internal network, load a VM on it, connect the VM to the NIC on your external net, have your internal machine connected on another network card to the internal network (or even better, dont have your internal machine connected to the internal network at all; have another VM connected to the internal network on a separate NIC).
It's perfectly safe, you just have to think for a few minutes how you build the virtual network infrastructure in the physical box.
I've even had such a setup audited and cleared by external security auditing firms to be sure.
"Fair use means the ability to make backups and multiple copies for strict personal (your self and family) use only."
No, it doesnt, not even close. "Fair use" is the limited ability to use excerpts of copyrighted works, creating derivative works (and distributing them), without asking the copyright holders permission, provided the amount is small enough and certain other conditions apply. Examples would be parody, reviews, commentaries, etc.
Copies for personal use is sometimes legal under other exceptions, but "fair use" has nothing to do with that.
However, the first sale doctrine, which is what allows you to do whatever you wish with the copy you have bought (except copy it) might very well be applicable to de-DRM'ing with Fairplay.
"why is putting fees on blank media/recorders/networking connections considered as such a bad idea?"
It really isnt such a bad idea. It's just a terrible idea when combined with forbidding copying. Either you pay the artists through the tax when you buy media and it's legal to copy the work, or you forbid the copying and you dont tax the media. Cant have it both ways.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you have a firewall blocking the torrent ports? IIRC, if the other clients cant connect to your torrent ports that's what will happen to your rates.
Imagine if you spent a year of your life developing a new task scheduling algorithm. You incurred expenses, etc because you were inventing and developing rather than working a 9-5 job. You donate this to Linux and the community loves you.
Then Microsoft says "Hey, that's our idea". They didn't develop it. They just patented the concept.
Nothing offers any protection here.
If you think of something neat, chances are someone will come after you and drag you through court for the rest of your money and your life, claiming they own what you invented.
What motivation does that give anyone to invent anything or develop anything?
"Having 3 slots would be ideal but I won't say no to 2 GFX cards so I can drive two monitors from two independent graphics cards at last."
What's stopping you from plugging an extra PCI based card in today? I've been running two monitors from two independent graphics for years.
Tocqueville blames the rivers, oceans and rain for the devaluation of the 'liquid assets' of water bottling companies.
Many of the companies in the bottled water industry have invested heavily in, well, water. If the availability of free water is allowed to continue these assets are not worth as much as they could be.
Tocqueville now recommends that the oceans, rivers and lakes be drained in order to build a huge and thriving industry around limiting the availability of water. Combined with legal measures like outlawing other sources of water, and turning off tap water, as well as forbidding private wells this would create a massive amount of wealth in the US. The economic slump could be dealt with in one swift stroke.
Tocqueville would also like to call attention to their upcoming reports on the availability of free air, beer, speech and life, and how the economy could benefit from some other new measures.
Maybe it's because they'd have to increase the support contract costs to cover a higher incidence of serious filesystem related problems?
ReiserFS is nice, but it's not even close to corporate production stability.
Datacorruption issues are what keeps people working extended rotating shifts for days until they get stressrelated breakdowns in corporate environments.
Performance issues are what keeps people working normal days mulling interesting issues and eventually deciding to throw hardware at the problem.
Performance just isnt as important in most cases.
And, of course, the conclusion is also utterly wrong.
Overall, one should choose the best filesystem based upon the properties of the files they are dealing with for the best performance possible _with the stability requirements that one has_.
Most distributions dont ship with ext3 as default because it's fast (and to anyone who's seen a benchmark of Linux filesystems since forever, this should not come as a surprise).
They ship with ext3 as default because it causes the fewest screams of anguish from their users due to crashes, panics, bugs or dataloss.
My apologies for being snippish. I appear to be a bit short-tempered today.
"Very thought provoking stuff."
One realizes that there's so much of the history of these conflicts that isnt hidden, it's just rarely mentioned, and disappears from the understanding of the conflicts.
"(Arab terrorists today may look at that victory as inspiration to keep up their attacks)"
Yeah, unfortunately, that's at the very least plausible.
"Ya know, I've heard this claim before, but have never seen any evidence which supports it."
Do you know how to use google or read an encyclopedia? Have you tried looking? It's not like it's some form of hidden secret.
Try researching Irgun and Lehi, the two main pre-Israel state terrorist groups. If you're actually interested, that is.
And, no, it's NOT OK.
It just means that neither side has any moral high ground.
"And from what I've seen many of the Israeli people are very unhappy with that situation and are working to bring these people before a court of law to stand trial for their crimes."
Um, like the ones bombing innocent civilans in a marketplace in Haifa? Bombing embassies? Throwing grenades into cafes?
No, wait, they were lead by Menachem Begin, and he got to be prime minister, not brought in front of a court of law.
Face it, the Palestinians and Israeli both have pretty horrific pasts and present. There were several pre-Israeli state groups who had no compunctions whatsoever about targetting innocent civilians. Oh, and those groups later got integrated into the Israeli military.
It's hopeless and pointless to assign any form of moral high ground to either side. If you wish to think about that conflict in terms of deserving this or deserving that, you've already failed.
You're quite likely right.
That certainly is a boon to my world domination plans tho. I'm looking forward to the lack of uproar as the Znork for Lifelong Dictator option gets 100% of the votes.
"You, as a CS graduate, know why you want to use a linked list or a hash table, given the circumstances."
Of course, if someone wasn't a CS graduate they'd have picked that one up one chapter into an O'Reilly algorithm book. It's not like it's a very hard or complicated concept to grasp.
The relevant programming skills taught in CS are readily available in much more palatable form, so if you're only interested in learning programming it's not what you should be studying.
"Math isn't about math; it's about thinking."
That's always the excuse for any subject that gets criticised as a timewaster. Once it gets hard to defend it's always really about something else.
If the point really is to teach thinking, why not develop teaching methods and subjects that would be far more efficient at teaching that? Why not teach 'critical thinking', 'memorization techniques', 'problem solving', 'logic' and other general approaches instead of subjecting the impressionable young minds to subjects that many find boring and pointless (critiques with a certain level of validity too), and are likely to turn them off from learning at all?
Teaching kids to think by teaching them math is like teaching them to cook by setting fire to them. It may get the general concept of crisping meat across, but it's a bit painful and not quite to the point.
"If the patent holder loses it's case in court, it's forced to pay the legal fees of the defendant."
Pay the legal fees? How about automatically turning the case around into a criminal fraud, barratry, racketeering and extortion case instead?
Money isnt quite enough to deter these kinds of people.
"2.6 kernel performance with MySql should prompt many to upgrade, but it doesn't."
That's because a lot of us enterprise users frankly dont really care that much if there's improved preformance with MySql. One doesnt get called in to work in the middle of the night because they need a speed increase. One gets called in to work because the server is down. That means we tend to have as priority that the server is up. Which tends to cause a certain reluctance as far as installing 'new' code goes. If there's a performance problem on the scale where a new kernel might make a difference, I'd suggest throwing hardware at the problem. It's much easier, far cheaper, and offers much more peaceful sleeptime.
2.6 will get deployed in production when hardware is certified with it, when distributions are certified with it, when Oracle is certified with those distributions, when backup and monitoring software are certified with them, when we've run it ourselves in labs, and internal utilities are ported and/or recompiled and ready for deployment.
That'll take at least a year. Until then I'll play with it on my free time, and on my workstation. But hell, while I might be running my own driver code in my kernel at home, I wouldnt even be compiling a new kernel for a production machine unless there were _serious_ issues with the one from the vendor. It's just not worth the potential hassle.
Re-read section 5 again. Especially the part that says:
"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License."
That means, you only need to accept the terms of the GPL if you intend to do anything specifically forbidden by copyright law. That means it's entirely dependent on copyright law, and the GPL does not purport to be enforcable or binding unless you wish to engage in otherwise illegal activities.
Of course, as the GPL tries to be valid and stable in pretty much every jurisdiction on earth, it can hardly quote every possible condition under which you may, or may not, copy, modify and distribute the work in question under your specific jurisdictions copyright law, which means the language describing the conditions under which you have to accept the license is necessarily very generic. If you're interested in only modifying the work, without distributing it, you need to research the extent to which your local law permits modification of copyrighted material for personal use.
Mmm, you do have a point.
However, in cases such as Softman vs. Adobe, this is part of what the court found:
"The Court finds that the circumstances surrounding the transaction strongly suggests that the transaction is in fact a sale rather than a license. For example, the purchaser commonly obtains a single copy of the software, with documentation, for a single price, which the purchaser pays at the time of the transaction, and which constitutes the entire payment for the "license." The license runs for an indefinite term without provisions for renewal. In light of these indicia, many courts and commentators conclude that a "shrinkwrap license" transaction is a sale of goods rather than a license."
Further the court cites from VWP of Am., Inc. v. United States, 175 F.3d 1327, 1338-39 (Fed. Cir. 1999). Professor Raymond Nimmer,
"Ownership of a copy should be determined based on the actual character, rather than the label, of the transaction by which the user obtained possession. Merely labeling a transaction as a lease or license does not control. If a transaction involves a single payment giving the buyer an unlimited period in which it has a right to possession, the transaction is a sale. In this situation, the buyer owns the copy regardless of the label the parties use for the contract. Course of dealing and trade usage may be relevant, since they establish the expectations and intent of the parties. The pertinent issue is whether, as in a lease, the user may be required to return the copy to the vendor after the expiration of a particular period. If not, the transaction conveyed not only possession, but also transferred ownership of the copy."
This is also supported by Jobs comments about the users 'owning' what they download off iTMS.
In the Softman vs. Adobe, the EULA is also deemed unenforcable due to lack of agreement on Softmans part, which makes the case irrelevant as far as wether Apples contract is enforcable or not.
However, to quote yet another bit:
"The Court finds that the provisions contained in Adobe's EULA purport to diminish the rights of customers to use the software in ways ordinarily enjoyed by customers under copyright law. Therefore, these restrictions appear to be inconsistent with the balance of rights set forth in intellectual property law. Commentators have noted that the arguments for enforcing this balance are particularly persuasive in the context of shrinkwrap licenses because the balance of rights in intellectual property law is already tilted heavily in favor of the intellectual property owner. "The only countervailing forces favoring users are those rights specifically granted to users by federal law. In this context more than any other, therefore, it is justifiable to fear that removing or eviscerating those user rights may bring the whole edifice crumbling down."
This indicates that the court finds many reasons, even beside the issue of the EULA's validity as a contract, to vacate it.
"You use GPL code, you are bound by the license."
No, not in any way. You can use GPL code any way you wish. The GPL does not cover usage. The GPL covers distribution.
"Oh, so as long as I'm just doing large-scale copying for FREE, then it's okay?"
No, that would be covered by the same laws as GPL violations. Free, for profit, it doesnt matter. That's forbidden by copyright law. That's _distribution_. Large-scale, or small scale, as long as you copy and distribute, it's forbidden (unless it falls under certain other legal exceptions). That would also be comparable.
EULA's attempt restrict what you are allowed to do with your legally purchased copy by using _contract_ law. Under copyright law you're allowed to do whatever you wish with a copy you have purchased (except make copies and distribute). That's the first sale doctrine. You can paint it blue, sell it second hand, or make origami of it, if you wish to. Most EULAs will try to say that you're specifically forbidden to paint this blue, sell it second hand, criticise the contents or play it in your nephews stereo. Things that copyright law allows you to do. That's why EULA's can get trumped by other laws, like consumer laws, other sections of copyright law, etc. Contracts can be invalidated in court, should they contain clauses that are unreasonable, or plainly not legal.
Copyright law, while it does permit people to do pretty much whatever they want to a copy they've legally purchased, does not permit anyone to make copies of copyrighted material. That's where the GPL comes into play. The GPL is the permission you need to be able to make the copies. The same way Apple needs permission from the copyright owners to distribute music through iTMS. The same way a publisher needs permission from a writer to copy and distribute books.
The GPL, and the publishers contract with the writer, or Apples contract with the music owners are necessary to permit them to do things they're explicitly not allowed to do without permission under copyright law. It's illegal unless you have permission.
These are entirely different aspects of law. EULA's attempt to restrict what you're legally allowed to do through contracts. Permission contracts/licenses allow you to do something that is otherwise illegal.
You're not allowed to copy and distribute iTMS content, but Apple wouldn't need an EULA for that. It's already illegal under copyright law. But the EULA also tries to say you can only use the products on three Apple authorized computers. This goes against the first sales doctrine, and as such, could very well be overturned in court. Traditionally, you legally own the copy you have purchased, you can play it on any (single) computer you wish, wether Apple wants to authorize that computer or not. Further, they want to restrict you from attempting to modify or circumvent the security technology. Again, this is a very dubious clause. The DMCA may, or may not, forbid that in law in this case, but it would be questionable if it was enforcable as an EULA clause. Further, they attempt to claim that any use of the product not allowed in the Usage Agreement may be a copyright infringement. That is pure unadulterated bullshit. Any _copying_ of the product not allowed in the usage agreement may be a copyright infringement, but _use_ is never a copyright infringement. It _may_ be a contract violation, but that's a vastly different thing. Etc.
Sigh. For the billionth time, the GPL is not an EULA. The GPL is a copyright permission license. To violate the GPL you have to be engaging in distribution.
It would be the 'Same deal as GPL violators' if someone set up their own webshop, copied and sold iTMS content.
EULA's may, or may not, be enforcable. It's by no means a certain thing, and in the case of Apples EULA for iTMS it goes straight up against the First Sales Doctrine, which means that copyright law can very well trump the contract EULA trying to limit buyers rights beyond what copyright law permits them.
It's not even close to the 'same deal'.
"You really cannot run threads or single-systems-image systems on a cluster."
Well, except, you can.
"In my mind they aren't High Performance Computers... they are High Performance Clusters of Commodity Computers."
Well, neither are Crays machines really. They're just High Performance Clusters of slightly-better-than-off-the-shelf interconnected Commodity Computers.
It's just that 'our bus is better than ethernet' doesnt sound quite as cool as 'ours are the only _real_ HPCs'.
Sure, their (and many others) bus is faster. Today. It used to be faster yesterday too. But the off the shelf stuff is as fast today as theirs was yesterday. It's a scale that changes all the time, which makes it pointless to measure any definition of 'HPC' by the interconnect speed. Or didnt they make 'real' HPCs when they had 1Gb bus speeds?
If he wants to make a valid comparison he would do well to specify the type of load where his systems actually outperform commodity clusters, because there certainly is such load.
If it's sufficient for your needs I'd _really_ reccomend asciidoc.
Take a look at: http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/userguide.html
Brilliant for minimal markup, easy readability and conversion into other formats.
"Patents allow me to profit (horrors! evil profit!) from my years of work without needing to be quite so concerned about being ripped off."
You mistake software patents for other patents.
The way software patents work is that when you've finished with your years of work you'll first get sued by several dozens of IP holding companies as your several years of work happens to include several hundred 'ten minute brainstorm' patents.
Then, when you're at the tradeshow, still reeling, the Microsoft representative comes over and says "Heard about your recent legal troubles (tee-hee). Not to rain on your parade, but I see your product has clickable buttons. We have a patent on clickable buttons. I also see you use the color 'grey'. We have a patent on using the color 'grey' in GUI's. Now, sign over your company to us, and we'll give you a donut for your trouble. Or we'll see you in court. For the rest of your remaining life."
You see, the kind of company you're describing is _exactly_ the kind that will be hurt the most.
The ones who gain from software patents are small lawsuit companies who never have any intention of developing anything (or they could be countersued, and would have to cross-license). They'll just buy, or make up, junk patents to generate a minefield and then go fish.
And the other kind of companies who gain from software patents are giants who want to kill off competition in yet another way. They can also generate minefield type junk patents, and then drag any potential small competitor into court and kill them off by a war of legal attrition.
Software patents dont protect you from getting ripped off. They guarantee you will get a new orifice ripped for you, and then you'll get ripped off anyway.
The VM is verified inescapable. The host box does not have to be 'secure' (from the point of trying to hack the host from the VM), it just must not be connected to the external network. Take a physical machine on your internal network, load a VM on it, connect the VM to the NIC on your external net, have your internal machine connected on another network card to the internal network (or even better, dont have your internal machine connected to the internal network at all; have another VM connected to the internal network on a separate NIC).
It's perfectly safe, you just have to think for a few minutes how you build the virtual network infrastructure in the physical box.
I've even had such a setup audited and cleared by external security auditing firms to be sure.
"Fair use means the ability to make backups and multiple copies for strict personal (your self and family) use only."
No, it doesnt, not even close. "Fair use" is the limited ability to use excerpts of copyrighted works, creating derivative works (and distributing them), without asking the copyright holders permission, provided the amount is small enough and certain other conditions apply. Examples would be parody, reviews, commentaries, etc.
Copies for personal use is sometimes legal under other exceptions, but "fair use" has nothing to do with that.
However, the first sale doctrine, which is what allows you to do whatever you wish with the copy you have bought (except copy it) might very well be applicable to de-DRM'ing with Fairplay.
"why is putting fees on blank media/recorders/networking connections considered as such a bad idea?"
It really isnt such a bad idea. It's just a terrible idea when combined with forbidding copying. Either you pay the artists through the tax when you buy media and it's legal to copy the work, or you forbid the copying and you dont tax the media. Cant have it both ways.