Can you say "double standard"? When Microsoft has undocumented, private, internal APIs, everyone cries "Foul!" and accuses them of hiding these APIs from developers. When they then change those internal APIs, everyone again cries "Foul!" and accuses them of breaking these internal APIs intentionally.
The double standard is there for a reason. It is legal
to have a monopoly in one market, as long as you
do not use the
advantages of that monopoly to leverage your way
into other markets.
One of the advantages Microsoft has with the Windows
OS is privileged knowledge of the internal APIs.
Another advantage is knowing how and when they're going
to change them -- well before others can reverse
engineer the changes.
Given the monopoly status of the Windows product,
is not lawful for them to
leverage this knowledge to move into other markets.
Microsoft's violations of this legal requirement is the reason people
cry foul.
Re:Is Intel doing the right thing?
on
Itanium Problems
·
· Score: 2
True, but if you're driving it with 120 Vac (assuming a 100% AC-DC conversion), your house is only experiencing about an 11 amp draw.
Better check your math again. I = P / V = 130/120 = 1.1 Amps.
Where are those global warming nutcases now? Methinks they'll be very quit until the ice age ends, then get all worked up about the ice sheet over Calgary thinning.
Read the damned article. The ice age may be
caused by global warming via changes in
ocean salinity.
The climate is a chaotic nonlinear system. The results
of twiddling its parameters may be counterintuitive
or unpredictable. There never seems
to be any shortage of armchair climatologists who
can't comprehend this fact.
> So if they extended it to 1000 years, it would still be constitutional?
Sadly, yes.
Maybe congress should try to push it a little farther.
The next law could extend the copyright for
(as my old calculus professor would put it) "a
large, but finite, amount of time".
IOW, too large to represent with any number system,
but technically not actually infinity. Who knows, it could still
satisfy the constitutional mandate for a "limit".
intentionally blinding people with lasers is against the Geneva convention.
I can see it now:
GI: Sarge! There's a dozen or more enemy
troops on the other side of that ridge! I'm
going to call for air support: They'll blind
those bastards with a laser! We can go in
and round 'em up.
Sarge: No can do, soldier. That's against
the Geneva convention. You tell your flyboy
buddy to drop a Daisy Cutter on those a-holes.
I'm afraid the only humane way to handle this
situation is to incinerate those poor
bastards to a crispy crunch.
They didn't. Surely you've seen how many times
their electronic consoles would explode into a shower
of sparks, knocking a redshirt against the
opposite wall. Not shielded very well, I'm afraid.
I like many others was not concerned with them going. Thier attempt to lock the market in via the proprietray GLIDE API was a blatant move to control the market.
We're all really fortunate that we avoided the nightmare
of being locked in to a proprietary market
controlling API from 3DFX. Luckily, we are in a new
enlightened age where most games run on an
open, freely shared API fostered by a community
of the best minds from every segment
of the industry. There's no limit to what can be done
with our newfound freedom using APIs like Direct3D...
In theory, the maximum speed we can ever achieve no matter what technology we are using, is 100GHz in a die size of 10cm2. This is because of limitations imposed by the light speed (300,000km/s).
That's only true if you need to drive a signal clear
across the die in one clock. You could build
pipelined architectures that keep each signal
in a tiny area for any given clock interval.
The speed of light limits latency, but it doesn't
necessarily limit throughput or clock speed.
Streaming snail mail doesn't work for DVDs, but
you can get it to work for VHS.
The trick is to pull one end of the tape out of the
cartridge, then glue it to a post card. Drop the postcard
in the mail and leave the rest of the tape next
to the mailbox.
Now, as the head end of the tape makes its way
through the postal system, it automatically despools
the rest of the tape which streams along behind it.
As soon as the head end of the tape arrives,
the customer inserts it into in an
empty cartridge and starts to play it . As the VCR plays, it sucks the remainder
of the tape out of the postal system at the appropriate speed.
The snow effects you currently see on a big screen tv when watching 80$/month cable will turn into large blocks or black rectangles.
They already have for me. The digital channels
on my cable system look like a bad
Real Media video stream over a 14.4 modem.
Even without interference, the compression artifacts
are often visible.
The most annoying part is that when the blocks
become visible, they can remain motionless even when
the object that contains them moves. That is
really distracting and unnatural.
You sound a little edgy. Maybe you're not getting
enough sleep because you stay up too late
watching TV. If so, you might think about getting
rid of your TV. You'll be better for it.
Fortunately, here in the USA, the First Amendment protects our right
to write and publish generalized streams of characters, not
just text streams that are comprised solely of
whitespace-separated lists valid English words.
I saw a church recently with a huge white cross
in front which also has cellphone antennas mounted
on it. I don't know, but I'm guessing that they
got the cellular co. to pay for their cross as part of the
deal.
I guess the Romans had unintentional foresight
when they chose
to execute one of the world's most major prophets
on a tall, thin device.
So you can't attach an NDA wtih GPL'd software/source saying, "BTW, you know the part in the GPL where it says now that you have the source, you can distribute it too, so long as you adhere to these conditions?
Just to speculate, I suppose one could make the argument that the NDA
is a separate contract not associated with the GPL.
IOW, it's not that they've modified the GPL so that
you can't distribute the work. Instead, you've entered
into a separate agreement that says you won't distribute
the work.
Unlike the GPL, which is a license concerning
copyright laws, the NDA could be an ordinary contract
covering an exchange of commitments between two
parties. Unlike a shrinkwrapped EULA, it would be
actually signed by both parties.
I have no idea if that argument would fly, but it might
be what they are thinking.
The DRU500A by Sony burns DVD-R/-RW, DVD+RW/+R, and even CD-R/CD-RW discs.
At $349, you'd be wasting your money. I paid only $249 for a Sunbeam
Gas Grill. At 40,000 BTU/hour, it will easily burn DVD-R/-RW/+RW/+R/ROMs, CD-R/CD-RW/CD-ROMs,
floppies, Zip disks, Jaz disks, books, magazines, motherboards,
DVD/CD drives, keyboards, hotdogs, steaks, dead rodents, old
shoes... just about anything.
And if you get tired of all the burning, you can choose
to turn it down a bit and go with golden brown.
Why should shrink wrap licenses be any less binding then say the GPL?
Because the GPL expands upon the standard
rights you have with any copyrighted work that
you come accross (which by
default are very few). The "viral" nature of the GPL
only comes into effect when you attempt to
redistribute the work. By default, you can't redistribute
a copyrighted work at all (except for
dwindling fair use exceptions), so even the
part of the GPL that bothers everyone is actually
a relaxation of restrictions on your activities.
Typical EULAs attempt to restrict your rights
to an even smaller set than your default rights.
Not only can you not redistribute the software (same
as standard copyright) -- but they
might, for example, try to prevent you from publishing benchmark results on the software. Standard
copyright law does not prohibit you from benchmarking;
that's where shrinkwrap attempts to come in with an
additional (unsigned) "contract".
This would lead to a bunch of cookie-cutter cars, most of which have lousy handling, don't perform well, and are ugly to boot.
I don't know about performance, but I can't imagine
how anybody could create a car that is any uglier
than some of GM's current products, for example
this or
this. (Their current styling trend looks to me like a cross
between a chemical plant and plastic playground
equipment.) I doubt that this new
design could possibly be any worse.
Ok, let's say in a stallmanized world, copyright did not exist. What would then stop me from taking FSF code, re-bundling it, and selling it for a profit (without re-releasing my source).
You would not make any profit, because there would
be no way to restrict others from freely
copying your binary. Without the artificial
scarcity introduced by copyright, the
marginal dollar value of your product would
be almost zero. Therefore, you probably wouldn't
bother to try that.
Electric-powered vehicles usually pollute less because
of the puny storage capacities of current battery
technology. Since a battery can only store 1 or 2 orders
of magnitude less energy per pound than a hydrocarbon
fuel, this forces the vehicle designer to push for
extreme efficiency in the vehicle to get any useful range
at all.
The electric power may or may not pollute less per joule
than the energy from a conventional engine, but
since so many fewer joules are being used, pollution
is lower.
If a better battery were to arrive that allowed you to
get 300 miles range between charges driving a Lincoln
Navigator at 80 MPH, you probably wouldn't be saving
too much on overall pollution (at least with today's electric
power generating mix).
Slashdot Mirror
The double standard is there for a reason. It is legal to have a monopoly in one market, as long as you do not use the advantages of that monopoly to leverage your way into other markets.
One of the advantages Microsoft has with the Windows OS is privileged knowledge of the internal APIs. Another advantage is knowing how and when they're going to change them -- well before others can reverse engineer the changes. Given the monopoly status of the Windows product, is not lawful for them to leverage this knowledge to move into other markets.
Microsoft's violations of this legal requirement is the reason people cry foul.
Better check your math again. I = P / V = 130/120 = 1.1 Amps.
Read the damned article. The ice age may be caused by global warming via changes in ocean salinity.
The climate is a chaotic nonlinear system. The results of twiddling its parameters may be counterintuitive or unpredictable. There never seems to be any shortage of armchair climatologists who can't comprehend this fact.
Never mind.
Sadly, yes.
Maybe congress should try to push it a little farther. The next law could extend the copyright for (as my old calculus professor would put it) "a large, but finite, amount of time".
IOW, too large to represent with any number system, but technically not actually infinity. Who knows, it could still satisfy the constitutional mandate for a "limit".
I can see it now:
GI: Sarge! There's a dozen or more enemy troops on the other side of that ridge! I'm going to call for air support: They'll blind those bastards with a laser! We can go in and round 'em up.
Sarge: No can do, soldier. That's against the Geneva convention. You tell your flyboy buddy to drop a Daisy Cutter on those a-holes. I'm afraid the only humane way to handle this situation is to incinerate those poor bastards to a crispy crunch.
GI:Yes, Sir!
It's more efficient than a the single-digit percentage efficiency of a standard incandescent light bulb.
They didn't. Surely you've seen how many times their electronic consoles would explode into a shower of sparks, knocking a redshirt against the opposite wall. Not shielded very well, I'm afraid.
We're all really fortunate that we avoided the nightmare of being locked in to a proprietary market controlling API from 3DFX. Luckily, we are in a new enlightened age where most games run on an open, freely shared API fostered by a community of the best minds from every segment of the industry. There's no limit to what can be done with our newfound freedom using APIs like Direct3D...
Hmm, wait a minute...
That's only true if you need to drive a signal clear across the die in one clock. You could build pipelined architectures that keep each signal in a tiny area for any given clock interval.
The speed of light limits latency, but it doesn't necessarily limit throughput or clock speed.
Streaming snail mail doesn't work for DVDs, but you can get it to work for VHS.
The trick is to pull one end of the tape out of the cartridge, then glue it to a post card. Drop the postcard in the mail and leave the rest of the tape next to the mailbox.
Now, as the head end of the tape makes its way through the postal system, it automatically despools the rest of the tape which streams along behind it.
As soon as the head end of the tape arrives, the customer inserts it into in an empty cartridge and starts to play it . As the VCR plays, it sucks the remainder of the tape out of the postal system at the appropriate speed.
And so Google takes its first step down the slippery slope towards looking like the msn.com homepage.
They already have for me. The digital channels on my cable system look like a bad Real Media video stream over a 14.4 modem. Even without interference, the compression artifacts are often visible.
The most annoying part is that when the blocks become visible, they can remain motionless even when the object that contains them moves. That is really distracting and unnatural.
You sound a little edgy. Maybe you're not getting enough sleep because you stay up too late watching TV. If so, you might think about getting rid of your TV. You'll be better for it.
Fortunately, here in the USA, the First Amendment protects our right to write and publish generalized streams of characters, not just text streams that are comprised solely of whitespace-separated lists valid English words.
From that data, we can conclude that of the 1% of the population that is dorky enough to actually fill out and send in a registration, X% run Linux.
I guess the Romans had unintentional foresight when they chose to execute one of the world's most major prophets on a tall, thin device.
Just to speculate, I suppose one could make the argument that the NDA is a separate contract not associated with the GPL. IOW, it's not that they've modified the GPL so that you can't distribute the work. Instead, you've entered into a separate agreement that says you won't distribute the work.
Unlike the GPL, which is a license concerning copyright laws, the NDA could be an ordinary contract covering an exchange of commitments between two parties. Unlike a shrinkwrapped EULA, it would be actually signed by both parties.
I have no idea if that argument would fly, but it might be what they are thinking.
At $349, you'd be wasting your money. I paid only $249 for a Sunbeam Gas Grill. At 40,000 BTU/hour, it will easily burn DVD-R/-RW/+RW/+R/ROMs, CD-R/CD-RW/CD-ROMs, floppies, Zip disks, Jaz disks, books, magazines, motherboards, DVD/CD drives, keyboards, hotdogs, steaks, dead rodents, old shoes ... just about anything.
And if you get tired of all the burning, you can choose to turn it down a bit and go with golden brown.
You must be too young to have ever seen a flowchart.
In a world without IP, everyone would still have that right. There just wouldn't be very many buyers.
Because the GPL expands upon the standard rights you have with any copyrighted work that you come accross (which by default are very few). The "viral" nature of the GPL only comes into effect when you attempt to redistribute the work. By default, you can't redistribute a copyrighted work at all (except for dwindling fair use exceptions), so even the part of the GPL that bothers everyone is actually a relaxation of restrictions on your activities.
Typical EULAs attempt to restrict your rights to an even smaller set than your default rights. Not only can you not redistribute the software (same as standard copyright) -- but they might, for example, try to prevent you from publishing benchmark results on the software. Standard copyright law does not prohibit you from benchmarking; that's where shrinkwrap attempts to come in with an additional (unsigned) "contract".
I don't know about performance, but I can't imagine how anybody could create a car that is any uglier than some of GM's current products, for example this or this. (Their current styling trend looks to me like a cross between a chemical plant and plastic playground equipment.) I doubt that this new design could possibly be any worse.
You would not make any profit, because there would be no way to restrict others from freely copying your binary. Without the artificial scarcity introduced by copyright, the marginal dollar value of your product would be almost zero. Therefore, you probably wouldn't bother to try that.
The electric power may or may not pollute less per joule than the energy from a conventional engine, but since so many fewer joules are being used, pollution is lower.
If a better battery were to arrive that allowed you to get 300 miles range between charges driving a Lincoln Navigator at 80 MPH, you probably wouldn't be saving too much on overall pollution (at least with today's electric power generating mix).