Copyright law does allow you to sue for punitive damages in addition to actual damages (provided you've registered your copyright with the copyright office). But I'd have to find a lawyer who'd take it on a contingent fee basis, or else pay a lawyer out of pocket. That doesn't seem very practical to me, since I don't know the guy's name, don't know whether he even has any money, etc.
This may be a really stupid question, but have you tried contacting him directly and asking him to correct the behavior? Who knows? He might be willing to comply without a fuss, especially if you told him what corrections to make so that he could continue selling. I know you can always send an e-mail via ebay's "Ask seller a question" link. I never like to bring in lawyers unless absolutely necessary. Whenever they are involved, they seem to emerge as the only winners.
If you wanted his address, you could probably get with a bit of social engineering. Trying sending him an e-mail from one of his closed auctions asking "where do I mail payment?". He'll probably respond with at least a PO Box.
While I may be inclined to agree with you to a certain extent, if you want to see the effects of having everything nationalised then take a look at the U.K in the 70's. We're still dealing with the effects from a lot of Labour policies in the 60's and 70's. It isn't always a good idea.
As it turns out, as far as I can tell, apparently no federal policy maker (economic or otherwise) has read Milton Friedman'sCapitalism & Freedom (making this event quite ironic). Hell, I haven't even read more than half of it yet, and I can probably tell you how fucked up the current state of regulation is. Things which are currently regulated should no longer be, (e.g., post office, etc.). Things which are currently unregulated should be (e.g., MS, cable, etc.). Doesn't anyone read anymore? Or do politicians never escape adolescence when they think they know more than everyone else?
What the Bush Administration wants to see is the perpetuation of a world where the US has no rivals militarily, economically, politically, or technologically. This is also deeply unhealthy and pursuit of this goal will likely profoundly injur the US economy as the interests of businesses are turned aside in the name of keeping the money here at home. Open source does not suit that vision very well, nor for that matter does globalism. But it is anti-globalism for the wrong reasons.
Actually, keeping the money at home is not the goal of the neo-conservatives like Bush. Open Source is a threat because it can cross borders for free. Bush, and those like him want a world where they have no rivals, and the only way to do this is to make the US dollar the one and only currency used for world exchange. One can't do this if innovations are quietly slipping in and out of the United States without an exchange of currency that is controlled by the United States.
If a majority of the software in the world were commercial, and the majority of the companies providing that software resided in the US, it would only serve to strengthen the position of the dollar (since it would be the standard currency by which most software would be traded).
The Euro is (was) the only other currency which stood to give the dollar a...heh...run for its money. All the smoke and mirrors about terrorism and the UN security council and human rights were all bullshit when it came to the invasion of Iraq. It came down to one thing: economic power:
France and Germany got a lot of their oil from black marketeers who bought and sold oil from Iraq. The Euro was gaining acceptance as a standardized currency for these transactions, giving it weight and legitimacy as a world currency (one might scoff at the term "oil standard", but today, that's really what determines the value of a currency more than (m)any other factors).
The US wants to control the oil moving in and out of the states with which it has increasingly poor relations due to its incessant (and often irrational) support of Israel. Diplomacy would take too long, as it would allow the Euro to become seated as the standard method of exchange. The solution: invade these countries, control their oil (or at least enforce that it is traded with the US dollar as the standard currency), and send any contending currency back to the stone age (along with a few insignificant cultures). You'll notice that Syria Jordan and Iran are suddenly popping up on the radar as increasingly "bad".
Software is no different. It is a smaller market, sure. And it doesn't really stand to be the major determining factor of a standard world currency, but it does have other stop-gap effects. The theory is that those who control the flow of money can also control the flow of technology. They want to be able to create an artificial discrepancy so that the US always has the most advanced technologies. They can't do this if software is available for free. What they don't understand is that there are innovative people outside the US. OpenSource will live, whether it exists in the world, or in the world minus the US. The US just hopes it can starve those people out of existence before they become too powerful.
The cost of the keyboard and special mouse is $329 USD, easily more expensive than some top of the line computer hardware and rivals some high quality monitors as bank breakers.
This is something I've never understood, especially for "cutting edge" or "revolutionary" input devices (like the $1,300 keyboard/mouse thing in the review). If one was really trying for ubiquity or reasonable adoption, why do they make them so fscking expensive? I'd be semi-willing to retrain my muscle memory (for real this time) if the price was affordable much less attractive.
With that considered, not to mention having to get used to games with this setup, few games will ever use this, let alone see or touch it in real life.
There is one reason and one reason alone why I gave up adopting Dvorak: keyboard shortcuts. For me, C-x C-s in emacs has nothing to do with the letters 'X' and 'S' and has everthing to do with my left index and middle finger (one above the other) in quick succession. If you're tempted to remind me that I can override these shortcuts in emacs, don't bother. It would just screw me up more when using software overwhich I didn't have as much control.
Typing is one thing. Relearning your keyboard shortcuts is an order of magnitude harder. I've already resolved that I'm doomed to QWERTY. There's no hope for me. The only thing I can do is urge my children to learn something better.
You forget the number one rule of litigation: sue the entity with the deepest pockets. Of course, the RIAA doesn't seem to be playing by any set of rules....
>Programmers are the only ones who actually make use of computers.
Then could somebody PLEASE get the message to the Linux folks that we DON'T need to concentrate on making Linux friendly for the desktop? Since only programmers will be making use of it, we can just stick to the command line.
That doesn't sound like technology. That sounds like Amway with a hard drive.
Fortunately, I don't have to deal with that crap anymore, as I'm now using Perforce. It's certainly not perfect, but at least it doesn't bite big donkey dick.
Perforce is actually a pretty decent product. Personally, I prefer the command line interface, but there are plenty of third-party GUI tools which emulate the P4 windoze client.
One thing Perforce does seem to have difficulty with (and I'm not sure if this is just the result of user error) is a TRUNK (i.e., HEAD) = PRODUCTION development strategy.
In other words, your mainline sources always reflect what is (or is about to be) in production (that is, assuming you only release from one branch, like a website or something). To start a new project you branch from the mainline (or another branched project) and when you're ready for alpha testing, you release checkin restrictions on the mainline, merge your changes for the project back into the mainline, fix conflicts, start testing and make any repairs to the mainline. Then when, you're ready to release, you freeze the mainline again, tag it and push it to production.
I know you're probably asking, "why the hell would you do that?" The answer is that, theoretically if you've got one product you're releasing, but like to work on several different versions concurrently, then this branching strategy makes sense.
The problem with Perforce (and, again, this could be because of user error) is that it seems to generate unnecessary conflicts when merging back into the mainline. I don't know if this has been made easier in recent releases, but you may wish to make branching and merging a high priority test when evaluating any VCS software.
CVS may be the worst version control software in wide use.
Those of you who use and hate CVS may wish to check out SubVersion, a CVS replacement which leverages WebDAV via an Apache module. It can be used locally (i.e., sans server) as well, just like CVS. It's still in beta, but we use it and it's served us a lot better than CVS has. The only problem is some dev tools have (shortsighted) tight integration with one particular VCS or another (like CVS or MSVSS), so using an alternative breaks the "convenience" offered in these tools.
But I say fuck it. Tight integration is for wussies. Pipes and environment variables are the only integration I need....;o)
As we reviewed the cache statistics for our small ISP today, we noted that the traffic generated by Redhat Network Update feature constituted 45%....
Actually, this is easy to combat. Just make/var/spool/up2date a Samba or NFS mounted shared volume (or you can make it a symlink to one) on all your RedHat machines. For your first up2date execution that day/month/year/etc., use the --download flag. This will cache all the files in/var/spool/up2date. Then issue the same command without the --download flag on all machines which need updating. up2date won't needlessly download things that are cached in this directory, but your sigs will still be checked.
Maybe there's a similar solution for Windoze updates?
Wouldn't it be nice if you could set up a caching proxy to establish a verification process with the items being cached from that server - that way the server could perform checksum verification on the file and approve the copy for distribution.
It seems that it could be an easy implementation. The proxy requests the file verification in, an XML-RPC request is returned from the server to perform the checksum, the resulting data is sent via SOAP, and approval is given or denied, causing the cache to be used or flushed.
Ahh, but then that would involve Reverse Engineering, which, as we know is now illegal.
Not to mention that this is approaching a P2P network, which as we know can only be used for piracy.
Sorry, we're all just going to have to live with this new "innovation" in bandwidth utilization.
Everyone said the same thing about the 1-click patent. Didn't change anything though. They're just patenting obvious uses of existing technology. The problem is that the PTO doesn't have the slightest freaking clue about anything related to programming.
Except this one has some prior art from some pretty major players. I doubt this will stand for very long. The bitch of it is that it will be expensive and the lawyers will (as usual) be the only ones who "benefit".
I use hotmail, I never get span (except from MSN, but it is THEIR damned webspace i'm using). Now, i am worried that i will get spam blasts from having my address on my website, but it hasnt happened yet. hopefully it never will.
It would be interesting if the authors of the study published the the names of the companies which refused to honor the opt-in/opt-out preferences or who sold e-mail addresses inappropriately. I'm not sure how "ethical" this is, but I'd really like to know....
If you keep the license, you have to pay for it annually; no termination clause. If you want to transfer the license, you have to pay it out in full, despite the fact that you are getting reduced value from the license.
That's the problem. But you can certainly go on using the license after you sell the computer; you just have to buy a new computer first.
There is another solution: don't pay for the license in the first place. This seems to be what that Microsoft wants since they're putting so many incentives in place to make this the behavior of choice.
One equation to rule them all, one equation to find them one equation to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...
You laugh, but (from the article):
Gielis has patented his discovery, and is developing computer software based on it. Using one formula to produce shapes will make graphics programs much more efficient, he says. It might also be useful in pattern recognition.
On another "note":
References
1. Gielis, J. A generic geometric transformation that unifies a wide range of natural and abstract shapes. American Journal of Botany, 90, 333 - 338, (2003). |Article|
Has it ever occurred to you that you don't have to be RICH to be GREEDY or ENVIOUS?... Your so-called "elite" can only have whatever power over you that YOU decide to give them.
Forgive me for bringing this back on topic, but one doesn't have to be rich, greedy or envious to have their lives ruined by others who are exactly that (e.g., RIAA suing the shit out of a student). Why? Because the rich, greedy and envious make the rules by which the rest of us are forced to live.
To (mis?)quote a priest in a recent documentary which aired on HBO entitled, "A Question of Miracles", "I hope there's a special place in hell for those who profit from the suffering of others."
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." -- Janis Joplin
Of course, incomplete and incorrect documentation are not just found in commerical software - many open source libraries are even worse.
<sarcasm_sort_of> What are you talking about? With OpenSource software, the docs are the code. That way they're always correct (bugs and all)! </sarcasm_sort_of>
You live in a country with an incredibly good road system. You can get *anywhere* in the continental US by road. You can't get more than 15 miles away from a road in the continetal US.
And Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Sweden all have poor transportation?
You have running water. Reliably. You have indoor plumbing. You have readily available food. You have electricity.
Again, CA, FR, GB, IT, DE, SE don't have these?
You live in a place that has as many cars as families, because cars and gas are just that damned cheap here.
Is this a good thing? Do you know how much O2 a 5-liter Uh-mer-kin muscle car chews up just from driving to and from work on a semi-daily basis? Do you have any idea how many CO2-consuming organisms it takes to support your average Camero or Mustang owner? Why do we have so many cars here? Why aren't they needed in Manhattan or in most of Europe? Because our automotive industry killed our light rail industry in the first half of this century. We produce 3% of the world's oil. We consume nearly 60%. Hence our current predicament with our dependency on foreign oil. No, having that many cars is not something to boast about.
You don't have to fear for your life walking down the street (well, in some places, you do, but it's safer here than much of the rest of the world).
In most Iranian metropolitan areas, women can walk around at 03:00 alone without fear of abduction or harassment. People there don't give it any thought. I can't name one major city where this is true in the United States.
This is a nation in which *anyone* can get a job. Not necessarily a good job, or the job they want, but you can land a job that'll pay well enough for you to eat every day.
Unemployment in Switzerland has not reached more than 6% in over ten years. It averages around 3%-4%. You should read this if you want a better handle on what it means to be employed in this country.
I can drink the water anywhere in this nation without fear. Some places it looks a little brown, or have hard water, etc., but you can drink it without *dying*.
Once more, CA, FR, GB, IT, DE, SE don't have these?
You have incredible medical care. I know many places have better systems for covering payment, and it's free in many places, but there's very few places in US where you can't get immediate medical care.
The US has the best doctors in the world. We also have the highest liability. Does this seem odd to you? We are encouraging our doctors to become mediocre because it's not worth it to practice. I've talked with a fair amount of doctors (my family has more than its fair share of people working in medicine). They almost unilaterally have two pieces of advice for people in this country:
1. If you're thinking of becoming a doctor: don't. 2. Don't get sick, because unless you're rich, you'll get shit for care.
It's simply that, the particular set of advantages you get by being an American and living here on American soil is almost impossible to get anywhere else. Many places have worthwhile tradeoffs, but you can't get all the above just about anywhere else.
I realize that many of the above comments don't apply to everywhere in the world, and I apologize to the denizens of any nation that may be that much better, but I think that most of them apply somewhere.
The truth is that many cities outside the US are more livable than those within its borders. Hell, there are 9 countries which rank higher than we do in an audit of world democracies.
Please don't misunderstand. The US is a great place to live...one of the best in the world. I'm just real tired of its citizens thinking that this country's shit
No, they don't have to prove that. All they have to do is prove to the judge that the copyright violation was "willful" and the Copyright Act allows for the judge, at his or her discretion, to impose up to $150,000 in statutory, (not compensatory or punitive) damages per infringement.
I'm just curious, but at some point, doesn't it make sense just to leave the damn country for good? I mean at least we can still come and go sort of freely (for now)...why don't we all just go? No country can have power without a reasonably large populace underneath it. Clearly, this one is broken, and there is a lot of resistance to fixing it.
What do you wish you had known before child #1 was born?
4) The first two months are the worst. Expect improvements shortly thereafter. I call it the "break-in" period, but knowing that it ends will keep you (or more likely your wife) from sliding into post natal depression (sorry, I had to go to the UK to find a link because all the US government health sites' advice has been replaced with, "abstinence and prayer to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior is the only solution").
News for ya: Bush doens't make the laws. He signs them but your representatives make them.
This was alluded to in an earlier post, but I'll spell it out:
The Senate version of the Patriot Act, which closely resembled the legislation requested by Attorney General John Ashcroft, was sent straight to the floor with no discussion, debate, or hearings. Many Senators complained that they had little chance to read it, much less analyze it, before having to vote. In the House, hearings were held, and a carefully constructed compromise bill emerged from the Judiciary Committee. But then, with no debate or consultation with rank-and-file members, the House leadership threw out the compromise bill and replaced it with legislation that mirrored the Senate version. Neither discussion nor amendments were permitted, and once again members barely had time to read the thick bill before they were forced to cast an up-or-down vote on it. The Bush Administration implied that members who voted against it would be blamed for any further attacks - a powerful threat at a time when the nation was expecting a second attack to come any moment and when reports of new anthrax letters were appearing daily.
So yes, I think Bush is directly responsible for the passing of bad laws by way of manipulating "representatvies". They certainly weren't conducting the Will of the Public when they weren't given time to read the legislation and were threatened to vote for it by other members of the government.
Slashdot Mirror
Copyright law does allow you to sue for punitive damages in addition to actual damages (provided you've registered your copyright with the copyright office). But I'd have to find a lawyer who'd take it on a contingent fee basis, or else pay a lawyer out of pocket. That doesn't seem very practical to me, since I don't know the guy's name, don't know whether he even has any money, etc.
This may be a really stupid question, but have you tried contacting him directly and asking him to correct the behavior? Who knows? He might be willing to comply without a fuss, especially if you told him what corrections to make so that he could continue selling. I know you can always send an e-mail via ebay's "Ask seller a question" link. I never like to bring in lawyers unless absolutely necessary. Whenever they are involved, they seem to emerge as the only winners.
If you wanted his address, you could probably get with a bit of social engineering. Trying sending him an e-mail from one of his closed auctions asking "where do I mail payment?". He'll probably respond with at least a PO Box.
While I may be inclined to agree with you to a certain extent, if you want to see the effects of having everything nationalised then take a look at the U.K in the 70's. We're still dealing with the effects from a lot of Labour policies in the 60's and 70's. It isn't always a good idea.
As it turns out, as far as I can tell, apparently no federal policy maker (economic or otherwise) has read Milton Friedman's Capitalism & Freedom (making this event quite ironic). Hell, I haven't even read more than half of it yet, and I can probably tell you how fucked up the current state of regulation is. Things which are currently regulated should no longer be, (e.g., post office, etc.). Things which are currently unregulated should be (e.g., MS, cable, etc.). Doesn't anyone read anymore? Or do politicians never escape adolescence when they think they know more than everyone else?
What the Bush Administration wants to see is the perpetuation of a world where the US has no rivals militarily, economically, politically, or technologically. This is also deeply unhealthy and pursuit of this goal will likely profoundly injur the US economy as the interests of businesses are turned aside in the name of keeping the money here at home. Open source does not suit that vision very well, nor for that matter does globalism. But it is anti-globalism for the wrong reasons.
Actually, keeping the money at home is not the goal of the neo-conservatives like Bush. Open Source is a threat because it can cross borders for free. Bush, and those like him want a world where they have no rivals, and the only way to do this is to make the US dollar the one and only currency used for world exchange. One can't do this if innovations are quietly slipping in and out of the United States without an exchange of currency that is controlled by the United States.
If a majority of the software in the world were commercial, and the majority of the companies providing that software resided in the US, it would only serve to strengthen the position of the dollar (since it would be the standard currency by which most software would be traded).
The Euro is (was) the only other currency which stood to give the dollar a...heh...run for its money. All the smoke and mirrors about terrorism and the UN security council and human rights were all bullshit when it came to the invasion of Iraq. It came down to one thing: economic power:
France and Germany got a lot of their oil from black marketeers who bought and sold oil from Iraq. The Euro was gaining acceptance as a standardized currency for these transactions, giving it weight and legitimacy as a world currency (one might scoff at the term "oil standard", but today, that's really what determines the value of a currency more than (m)any other factors).
The US wants to control the oil moving in and out of the states with which it has increasingly poor relations due to its incessant (and often irrational) support of Israel. Diplomacy would take too long, as it would allow the Euro to become seated as the standard method of exchange. The solution: invade these countries, control their oil (or at least enforce that it is traded with the US dollar as the standard currency), and send any contending currency back to the stone age (along with a few insignificant cultures). You'll notice that Syria Jordan and Iran are suddenly popping up on the radar as increasingly "bad".
Software is no different. It is a smaller market, sure. And it doesn't really stand to be the major determining factor of a standard world currency, but it does have other stop-gap effects. The theory is that those who control the flow of money can also control the flow of technology. They want to be able to create an artificial discrepancy so that the US always has the most advanced technologies. They can't do this if software is available for free. What they don't understand is that there are innovative people outside the US. OpenSource will live, whether it exists in the world, or in the world minus the US. The US just hopes it can starve those people out of existence before they become too powerful.
Anyone who seeks out power should immediately be disqualified from having it.
Now if only there was a way to enforce that....
The cost of the keyboard and special mouse is $329 USD, easily more expensive than some top of the line computer hardware and rivals some high quality monitors as bank breakers.
This is something I've never understood, especially for "cutting edge" or "revolutionary" input devices (like the $1,300 keyboard/mouse thing in the review). If one was really trying for ubiquity or reasonable adoption, why do they make them so fscking expensive? I'd be semi-willing to retrain my muscle memory (for real this time) if the price was affordable much less attractive.
With that considered, not to mention having to get used to games with this setup, few games will ever use this, let alone see or touch it in real life.
There is one reason and one reason alone why I gave up adopting Dvorak: keyboard shortcuts. For me, C-x C-s in emacs has nothing to do with the letters 'X' and 'S' and has everthing to do with my left index and middle finger (one above the other) in quick succession. If you're tempted to remind me that I can override these shortcuts in emacs, don't bother. It would just screw me up more when using software overwhich I didn't have as much control.
Typing is one thing. Relearning your keyboard shortcuts is an order of magnitude harder. I've already resolved that I'm doomed to QWERTY. There's no hope for me. The only thing I can do is urge my children to learn something better.
Holy crap, we're all next...
You forget the number one rule of litigation: sue the entity with the deepest pockets. Of course, the RIAA doesn't seem to be playing by any set of rules....
>Programmers are the only ones who actually make use of computers.
Then could somebody PLEASE get the message to the Linux folks that we DON'T need to concentrate on making Linux friendly for the desktop? Since only programmers will be making use of it, we can just stick to the command line.
That doesn't sound like technology. That sounds like Amway with a hard drive.
Fortunately, I don't have to deal with that crap anymore, as I'm now using Perforce. It's certainly not perfect, but at least it doesn't bite big donkey dick.
Perforce is actually a pretty decent product. Personally, I prefer the command line interface, but there are plenty of third-party GUI tools which emulate the P4 windoze client.
One thing Perforce does seem to have difficulty with (and I'm not sure if this is just the result of user error) is a TRUNK (i.e., HEAD) = PRODUCTION development strategy.
In other words, your mainline sources always reflect what is (or is about to be) in production (that is, assuming you only release from one branch, like a website or something). To start a new project you branch from the mainline (or another branched project) and when you're ready for alpha testing, you release checkin restrictions on the mainline, merge your changes for the project back into the mainline, fix conflicts, start testing and make any repairs to the mainline. Then when, you're ready to release, you freeze the mainline again, tag it and push it to production.
I know you're probably asking, "why the hell would you do that?" The answer is that, theoretically if you've got one product you're releasing, but like to work on several different versions concurrently, then this branching strategy makes sense.
The problem with Perforce (and, again, this could be because of user error) is that it seems to generate unnecessary conflicts when merging back into the mainline. I don't know if this has been made easier in recent releases, but you may wish to make branching and merging a high priority test when evaluating any VCS software.
CVS may be the worst version control software in wide use.
;o)
Those of you who use and hate CVS may wish to check out SubVersion, a CVS replacement which leverages WebDAV via an Apache module. It can be used locally (i.e., sans server) as well, just like CVS. It's still in beta, but we use it and it's served us a lot better than CVS has. The only problem is some dev tools have (shortsighted) tight integration with one particular VCS or another (like CVS or MSVSS), so using an alternative breaks the "convenience" offered in these tools.
But I say fuck it. Tight integration is for wussies. Pipes and environment variables are the only integration I need....
> It makes a lot of sense for items that are fundamentally scarce... material goods, livestock, land.
So by your arguement, if China starts shooting Americans at random, it's ok because it's part of their culture.
Well, Americans aren't that scarce of a resource, so...yes!
As we reviewed the cache statistics for our small ISP today, we noted that the traffic generated by Redhat Network Update feature constituted 45%....
/var/spool/up2date a Samba or NFS mounted shared volume (or you can make it a symlink to one) on all your RedHat machines. For your first up2date execution that day/month/year/etc., use the --download flag. This will cache all the files in /var/spool/up2date. Then issue the same command without the --download flag on all machines which need updating. up2date won't needlessly download things that are cached in this directory, but your sigs will still be checked.
Actually, this is easy to combat. Just make
Maybe there's a similar solution for Windoze updates?
Wouldn't it be nice if you could set up a caching proxy to establish a verification process with the items being cached from that server - that way the server could perform checksum verification on the file and approve the copy for distribution.
It seems that it could be an easy implementation. The proxy requests the file verification in, an XML-RPC request is returned from the server to perform the checksum, the resulting data is sent via SOAP, and approval is given or denied, causing the cache to be used or flushed.
Ahh, but then that would involve Reverse Engineering, which, as we know is now illegal.
Not to mention that this is approaching a P2P network, which as we know can only be used for piracy.
Sorry, we're all just going to have to live with this new "innovation" in bandwidth utilization.
Everyone said the same thing about the 1-click patent. Didn't change anything though. They're just patenting obvious uses of existing technology. The problem is that the PTO doesn't have the slightest freaking clue about anything related to programming.
Except this one has some prior art from some pretty major players. I doubt this will stand for very long. The bitch of it is that it will be expensive and the lawyers will (as usual) be the only ones who "benefit".
I use hotmail, I never get span (except from MSN, but it is THEIR damned webspace i'm using). Now, i am worried that i will get spam blasts from having my address on my website, but it hasnt happened yet. hopefully it never will.
It would be interesting if the authors of the study published the the names of the companies which refused to honor the opt-in/opt-out preferences or who sold e-mail addresses inappropriately. I'm not sure how "ethical" this is, but I'd really like to know....
If you keep the license, you have to pay for it annually; no termination clause. If you want to transfer the license, you have to pay it out in full, despite the fact that you are getting reduced value from the license.
That's the problem. But you can certainly go on using the license after you sell the computer; you just have to buy a new computer first.
There is another solution: don't pay for the license in the first place. This seems to be what that Microsoft wants since they're putting so many incentives in place to make this the behavior of choice.
One equation to rule them all, one equation to find them one equation to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...
You laugh, but (from the article):
Gielis has patented his discovery, and is developing computer software based on it. Using one formula to produce shapes will make graphics programs much more efficient, he says. It might also be useful in pattern recognition.
On another "note":
References
1. Gielis, J. A generic geometric transformation that unifies a wide range of natural and abstract shapes. American Journal of Botany, 90, 333 - 338, (2003). |Article|
Didn't this guy have a musical group or something?
Has it ever occurred to you that you don't have to be RICH to be GREEDY or ENVIOUS? ... Your so-called "elite" can only have whatever power over you that YOU decide to give them.
Forgive me for bringing this back on topic, but one doesn't have to be rich, greedy or envious to have their lives ruined by others who are exactly that (e.g., RIAA suing the shit out of a student). Why? Because the rich, greedy and envious make the rules by which the rest of us are forced to live.
To (mis?)quote a priest in a recent documentary which aired on HBO entitled, "A Question of Miracles", "I hope there's a special place in hell for those who profit from the suffering of others."
"Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." -- Janis Joplin
Of course, incomplete and incorrect documentation are not just found in commerical software - many open source libraries are even worse.
<sarcasm_sort_of>
What are you talking about? With OpenSource software, the docs are the code. That way they're always correct (bugs and all)!
</sarcasm_sort_of>
Wasn't this pioneered years ago when the UNIX file system checking command was created?
Actually, it started with this system call. The file system checker came a little later.
Freedom hasn't been won so the RIAA can sue a kid for 98 billion.
Trillion. Ninety eight trillion dollars. With a "tr".
You live in a country with an incredibly good road system. You can get *anywhere* in the continental US by road. You can't get more than 15 miles away from a road in the continetal US.
And Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Sweden all have poor transportation?
You have running water. Reliably. You have indoor plumbing. You have readily available food. You have electricity.
Again, CA, FR, GB, IT, DE, SE don't have these?
You live in a place that has as many cars as families, because cars and gas are just that damned cheap here.
Is this a good thing? Do you know how much O2 a 5-liter Uh-mer-kin muscle car chews up just from driving to and from work on a semi-daily basis? Do you have any idea how many CO2-consuming organisms it takes to support your average Camero or Mustang owner? Why do we have so many cars here? Why aren't they needed in Manhattan or in most of Europe? Because our automotive industry killed our light rail industry in the first half of this century. We produce 3% of the world's oil. We consume nearly 60%. Hence our current predicament with our dependency on foreign oil. No, having that many cars is not something to boast about.
You don't have to fear for your life walking down the street (well, in some places, you do, but it's safer here than much of the rest of the world).
In most Iranian metropolitan areas, women can walk around at 03:00 alone without fear of abduction or harassment. People there don't give it any thought. I can't name one major city where this is true in the United States.
This is a nation in which *anyone* can get a job. Not necessarily a good job, or the job they want, but you can land a job that'll pay well enough for you to eat every day.
Unemployment in Switzerland has not reached more than 6% in over ten years. It averages around 3%-4%. You should read this if you want a better handle on what it means to be employed in this country.
I can drink the water anywhere in this nation without fear. Some places it looks a little brown, or have hard water, etc., but you can drink it without *dying*.
Once more, CA, FR, GB, IT, DE, SE don't have these?
You have incredible medical care. I know many places have better systems for covering payment, and it's free in many places, but there's very few places in US where you can't get immediate medical care.
The US has the best doctors in the world. We also have the highest liability. Does this seem odd to you? We are encouraging our doctors to become mediocre because it's not worth it to practice. I've talked with a fair amount of doctors (my family has more than its fair share of people working in medicine). They almost unilaterally have two pieces of advice for people in this country:
1. If you're thinking of becoming a doctor: don't.
2. Don't get sick, because unless you're rich, you'll get shit for care.
It's simply that, the particular set of advantages you get by being an American and living here on American soil is almost impossible to get anywhere else. Many places have worthwhile tradeoffs, but you can't get all the above just about anywhere else.
I realize that many of the above comments don't apply to everywhere in the world, and I apologize to the denizens of any nation that may be that much better, but I think that most of them apply somewhere.
The truth is that many cities outside the US are more livable than those within its borders. Hell, there are 9 countries which rank higher than we do in an audit of world democracies.
Please don't misunderstand. The US is a great place to live...one of the best in the world. I'm just real tired of its citizens thinking that this country's shit
No, they don't have to prove that. All they have to do is prove to the judge that the copyright violation was "willful" and the Copyright Act allows for the judge, at his or her discretion, to impose up to $150,000 in statutory, (not compensatory or punitive) damages per infringement.
I'm just curious, but at some point, doesn't it make sense just to leave the damn country for good? I mean at least we can still come and go sort of freely (for now)...why don't we all just go? No country can have power without a reasonably large populace underneath it. Clearly, this one is broken, and there is a lot of resistance to fixing it.
Speaking of which, whatever happened to John's Switch To Canada parody?
Then about 13 years later, expect five years that will make you nostalgic for the first two months.
My dad always had a different strategy to raising children:
1. When they're born, you put them in a box with holes.
2. When they reach thirteen...cover up the holes.
What do you wish you had known before child #1 was born?
4) The first two months are the worst. Expect improvements shortly thereafter. I call it the "break-in" period, but knowing that it ends will keep you (or more likely your wife) from sliding into post natal depression (sorry, I had to go to the UK to find a link because all the US government health sites' advice has been replaced with, "abstinence and prayer to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior is the only solution").
News for ya: Bush doens't make the laws. He signs them but your representatives make them.
This was alluded to in an earlier post, but I'll spell it out:
The Senate version of the Patriot Act, which closely resembled the legislation requested by Attorney General John Ashcroft, was sent straight to the floor with no discussion, debate, or hearings. Many Senators complained that they had little chance to read it, much less analyze it, before having to vote. In the House, hearings were held, and a carefully constructed compromise bill emerged from the Judiciary Committee. But then, with no debate or consultation with rank-and-file members, the House leadership threw out the compromise bill and replaced it with legislation that mirrored the Senate version. Neither discussion nor amendments were permitted, and once again members barely had time to read the thick bill before they were forced to cast an up-or-down vote on it. The Bush Administration implied that members who voted against it would be blamed for any further attacks - a powerful threat at a time when the nation was expecting a second attack to come any moment and when reports of new anthrax letters were appearing daily.
Here's the source.
So yes, I think Bush is directly responsible for the passing of bad laws by way of manipulating "representatvies". They certainly weren't conducting the Will of the Public when they weren't given time to read the legislation and were threatened to vote for it by other members of the government.