People drive badly enough as it is. Can you imagine what it would be like if you added a third dimension to the problem of getting from point A to point B? Cars wouldn't just be crashing into each other, they'd be dropping into people's living rooms.
Let's get hands-free, computer-navigated cars working perfectly in two dimensions first.
"Curt Pringle is famous for hiring private security guards to go election polls on election day. The district Pringle was running in was mixed Anglo and Hispanic. Pringle thought it might intimidate some voters to see an "official" agent at the polling place. It worked, many Hispanics out of fear went to their polling places, but on site of the uniformed guards left without voting. Pringle and staff were tried and found guilty.The usual fine for "moral" people like him--a slap on the wrist and a dollar fine, which of course a few fund raisers will take care of." Turn Left
Same thing happened in Florida in the summer of 2000: mini-Shrub ordered an "audit" of voter registration rolls in key districts, resulting in as many as sixty thousand (mostly black, Democratic) voters being turned away from the polls on election day. Some of them discovered they had been unregistered due to criminal convictions... in the future!
This is why my economic reform plan includes making intellectual property held by corporations non-transferable. If a corporation fails, its intellectual property will become public domain.
You can vote for me in 2012, if voting's still legal.
I've observed similar. My car will play pretty much any CD-R I throw at it, but there's a CD player at work that simply will not recognize a disc burned at any speed over 8X.
IIRC, CD-Rs don't have holes in the metal layer like factory pressed CDs, they just have melted spots that reflect a little bit differently. I can see how a CD-R designed for high-speed burning might end up sub-optimal if over-burned at low speeds. In the end, it may come down to running your own longevity experiments with your particular burner and media. I intend to do just that later on this summer. (Hello, dashboard...)
I agree, Rednecks are quite likable. It's not rednecks I have a problem with; it's their corporate masters. After Southern-fried politics end economics finally bled the South dry in the mid 1980s, the slave drivers began infiltrating the economy of the North, destroying our small businesses and squeezing our middle class out of existance.
The only thing that really bothers me about rednecks is how proud they are to be Southern how proud they are of the institutions that enslave them. Rednecks are fond of saying that the South will rise again. I always just laugh and think, yeah right... you can't even organize yourselves against your own money-grubbing, extortion-scheming utility companies, much less take on a Yankee army.
But I really have nothing against rednecks. The next time we drive from Atlanta to the sea, it won't be your homes burning, just the ivory towers.
...that and the way they make up criminal records to keep people from voting, seize cash and property without due process, and invent past-due traffic tickets to extort money from out-of-state drivers. Florida's always been pretty unclear on the Fourth Amendment. Florida and Texas both need to be kicked straight out of the Union. Or maybe they just need a good old fashioned W. T. Sherman ass-kicking. To arms, Yankee militias, to arms!
Getting rid of Saddam was the easy part. What's left to accomplish is *very* similar to what was asked of our soldiers forty years ago in a certain little Southeast Asian country: winning the hearts and minds of the people after we've bombed the fuck out of them. It can't be done; it's never worked and never will, and our faithfully obedient soldiers are going to keep dying nasty for it until we throw in the towel and bring them home.
If you think we've won, you're *really* not paying attention...
The Arab side has (re-)started all of the wars against Israel in the Israel's modern history -- beginning in 1948.
I'm aware of that. But that was preceded by the Deir Yassin massacre, which was perpetrated by an Israeli mob against unarmed Arab civilians. The Israeli government never took responsibility for it and refused to prosecute the killers or even investigate the matter.
And to say that Israel doesn't intentionally target civilians is pretty darn close to a lie. They "accidentally" shoot civilians all the time. They use high-explosive rockets to kill old men in wheelchairs. They shoot little kids throwing rocks. They shoot peace activists, including Caucasian Britons and Americans, whom you can hardly mistake for Arab gunmen. They machine-gun carloads of innocent women and children. Their police execute captured criminals in the street instead of handing them over for trial. Israel definitely has blood on its hands. Elected or not, racist hatemongers like Sharon are to blame.
I still contend that 99% of the people in the region, Arab or Jew, just want to live in peace. Decapitating the power structures of both sides is the only real "road map" to peace.
You can't be nice to Palestinians and Israelis at once, for example -- the want each other dead.
No, they don't. Only a few radicals on each side want the other side dead. The rest of the people just want to live in peace.
If the United States were a moral country and the President had any balls, he'd invite Arafat and Sharon to a summit, then kidnap the fat fucks and hold them hostage until the stupid terrorists on both sides learn to play nice.
If you've ever tried to develop something for Linux, or even just build something, you know what a royal pain in the ass "choice" is! You probably have two different widget libraries installed, half a dozen inter-language bindings for those, three different GL implementations, and who knows how many other redundant libraries. You try to build the latest version of XYZ, and find out it requires a {newer|older} version of library ABC... aargh!
If you want to see Linux on the desktop, you need apps (read: games). If you want to see games, you need a stable, predictable platform. That means a well-known, widely-used, reasonably current yet stable distro that only installs one way, with very few options. Not many companies are in a position to make this happen. I was holding out hope that RedHat might do it, but that's not the direction they're heading with either RHEL or Fedora.
Yeah, messy. Maybe there needs to be a clause in the GPL to cover this situation, because I think we all agree that, regardless of what a lawyer might say, the situation described violates the intent of the GPL:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
IMO, this section should be clarified to better reflect that if you distribute a copy of GPL software, then your offer of source code must extend to any third party to whom that particular copy passes. I believe that was the intent of (b) above, but it's not stated very clearly. To fulfill their obligations under the GPL, Company X would then be responsible for providing source code to anyone who buys ROMs from Company Y. And section (c) could be expanded to cover Company Y's obligations under the GPL, if indeed they have any.
the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title
My contention is that a copy of GPL sofware is not "a copy made lawfully under this title," it's a copy made lawfully under a license. That's the same argument commercial software vendors tried to make, but the courts ruled that the sale of commercial software satisfies the copyright holder's exclusive right of first sale specifically because of the business model used to distribute it. They did not rule on whether the same applies to the GPL's distribution model. It's dangerous to generalize a court ruling, but it's just dangerous to assume that it won't be generalized. That's why I think the GPL needs to be clarified... and why Company Y is skating on thin ice!
I was faced with a similar situation once, but I handled it much differently.
My local ISP was bought out by an evil megacorporation, and they raised the prices and lowered the customer service standards. During the transition, I moved out of their service area and canceled my account. I kept checking my old email address to make sure nobody important was sending stuff there. After several months, I grew tired of this and asked them to close it. I also asked them to remove my personal Web page, since I had long forgotten my FTP password.
Unfortunately, they had apparently lost track of some of their assets during the buyout. They repeatedly denied that the Web server belonged to them or that I had even been one of their customers, despite the fact that the last bill I received had their name and logo on it. I pointed out that {formerisp}.com was registered to them and listed on their Webmail page, and webpages.{formerisp}.com resolved to their netblock, but they still denied responsibility. By cranking up the rudeness, I finally got my complaint escalated to somebody with a clue, it was resolved and forgotten.
Six months later, I got a request for an interview by a company that had pulled my resume off the old site. Sure enough, some moron had apparently restored a backup and my old site along with it! Google still ranked my old site above my new one in a search for my skillset. As you can imagine, I was pissed. But this time around, the evil ISP was even more adamant that the server didn't belong to them.
Time for some vigilante customer service! I meditated until I remembered my FTP password, and replaced my old site with an embellished tale of my troubles with the evil ISP. I used the most unflattering language, threw in some slander and libel for good measure, summed it up with a challenge to permanently remove the page, and pseudonymously emailed the link to tech support. Needless to say, it was taken care of most ricky-tick!
Right, you can sell copies. Media. Not the software itself. The GNU Philosophy of Selling makes this distinction:
Strictly speaking, ``selling'' means trading goods for money. Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it.
However, when people think of ``selling software'', they usually imagine doing it the way most companies do it: making the software proprietary rather than free.
So unless you're going to draw distinctions carefully, the way this article does, we suggest it is better to avoid using the term ``selling software'' and choose some other wording instead. For example, you could say ``distributing free software for a fee''--that is unambiguous.
More to the point, Company X can sell as many copies of GPLed software as it wants, but it's still not "first sale" because Company X is not the copyright holder.
Oh, and by the way... thank you for challenging me on this and not just flaming. I'm still convinced I'm right, but for different reasons than I originally thought. I would not have taken the time to research this had you not been so persistent and articulate.
Right of first sale was ruled to apply to software in Softman vs. Adobe. In its explanation of that decision, the court stated that because of the "economic realities of the exchange," Adobe's distribution of its software constituted a sale and not a license, and was therefore governed by the rule of first sale.
The court did not, however, invalidate software licenses in general, or state broadly that all license agreements are to be considered sales. It only outlined the conditions under which the transfer of software is considered a sale. Because the transfer of money is explicitly limited by the GPL, it does not meet these criteria. Nothing in the GPL allows Company X (or anyone other than the original copyright holder) to sell the software! In fact, it states explicitly that one may only charge for the actual cost of copying and distribution of the media containing the software (Section 1). Because of this, I do not believe that the right of first sale applies to the situation described in the parent post. Whether the courts would agree with me is, of course, yet to be seen...
OK, I was too hasty in my reply. Referring back to the situation described, it is Company Y that is in violation of the GPL. Apparently you and I have no disagreement there. My contention is that points 4 and 5 of the parent are incorrect.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's get hands-free, computer-navigated cars working perfectly in two dimensions first.
...when did Slashdot become Freshmeat? This entire topic is (-1, Redundant).
Same thing happened in Florida in the summer of 2000: mini-Shrub ordered an "audit" of voter registration rolls in key districts, resulting in as many as sixty thousand (mostly black, Democratic) voters being turned away from the polls on election day. Some of them discovered they had been unregistered due to criminal convictions... in the future!
This is why my economic reform plan includes making intellectual property held by corporations non-transferable. If a corporation fails, its intellectual property will become public domain.
You can vote for me in 2012, if voting's still legal.
I've observed similar. My car will play pretty much any CD-R I throw at it, but there's a CD player at work that simply will not recognize a disc burned at any speed over 8X.
IIRC, CD-Rs don't have holes in the metal layer like factory pressed CDs, they just have melted spots that reflect a little bit differently. I can see how a CD-R designed for high-speed burning might end up sub-optimal if over-burned at low speeds. In the end, it may come down to running your own longevity experiments with your particular burner and media. I intend to do just that later on this summer. (Hello, dashboard...)
The only thing that really bothers me about rednecks is how proud they are to be Southern how proud they are of the institutions that enslave them. Rednecks are fond of saying that the South will rise again. I always just laugh and think, yeah right... you can't even organize yourselves against your own money-grubbing, extortion-scheming utility companies, much less take on a Yankee army.
But I really have nothing against rednecks. The next time we drive from Atlanta to the sea, it won't be your homes burning, just the ivory towers.
A mind like that is to be envied.
...that and the way they make up criminal records to keep people from voting, seize cash and property without due process, and invent past-due traffic tickets to extort money from out-of-state drivers. Florida's always been pretty unclear on the Fourth Amendment. Florida and Texas both need to be kicked straight out of the Union. Or maybe they just need a good old fashioned W. T. Sherman ass-kicking. To arms, Yankee militias, to arms!
Getting rid of Saddam was the easy part. What's left to accomplish is *very* similar to what was asked of our soldiers forty years ago in a certain little Southeast Asian country: winning the hearts and minds of the people after we've bombed the fuck out of them. It can't be done; it's never worked and never will, and our faithfully obedient soldiers are going to keep dying nasty for it until we throw in the towel and bring them home. If you think we've won, you're *really* not paying attention...
Crap. Try this link. Image 15.
ancient artifact
modern smut
Coincidence?
I'm aware of that. But that was preceded by the Deir Yassin massacre, which was perpetrated by an Israeli mob against unarmed Arab civilians. The Israeli government never took responsibility for it and refused to prosecute the killers or even investigate the matter.
And to say that Israel doesn't intentionally target civilians is pretty darn close to a lie. They "accidentally" shoot civilians all the time. They use high-explosive rockets to kill old men in wheelchairs. They shoot little kids throwing rocks. They shoot peace activists, including Caucasian Britons and Americans, whom you can hardly mistake for Arab gunmen. They machine-gun carloads of innocent women and children. Their police execute captured criminals in the street instead of handing them over for trial. Israel definitely has blood on its hands. Elected or not, racist hatemongers like Sharon are to blame.
I still contend that 99% of the people in the region, Arab or Jew, just want to live in peace. Decapitating the power structures of both sides is the only real "road map" to peace.
No, they don't. Only a few radicals on each side want the other side dead. The rest of the people just want to live in peace.
If the United States were a moral country and the President had any balls, he'd invite Arafat and Sharon to a summit, then kidnap the fat fucks and hold them hostage until the stupid terrorists on both sides learn to play nice.
Stop perpetuating that lie, you McCarthyist.
If you want to see Linux on the desktop, you need apps (read: games). If you want to see games, you need a stable, predictable platform. That means a well-known, widely-used, reasonably current yet stable distro that only installs one way, with very few options. Not many companies are in a position to make this happen. I was holding out hope that RedHat might do it, but that's not the direction they're heading with either RHEL or Fedora.
Well, we better come up with something quick, before al-Qaeda does!
What if you could go back in time and encourage Hitler in his career as a painter?
And all that jazz.
IMO, this section should be clarified to better reflect that if you distribute a copy of GPL software, then your offer of source code must extend to any third party to whom that particular copy passes. I believe that was the intent of (b) above, but it's not stated very clearly. To fulfill their obligations under the GPL, Company X would then be responsible for providing source code to anyone who buys ROMs from Company Y. And section (c) could be expanded to cover Company Y's obligations under the GPL, if indeed they have any.
the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title
My contention is that a copy of GPL sofware is not "a copy made lawfully under this title," it's a copy made lawfully under a license. That's the same argument commercial software vendors tried to make, but the courts ruled that the sale of commercial software satisfies the copyright holder's exclusive right of first sale specifically because of the business model used to distribute it. They did not rule on whether the same applies to the GPL's distribution model. It's dangerous to generalize a court ruling, but it's just dangerous to assume that it won't be generalized. That's why I think the GPL needs to be clarified... and why Company Y is skating on thin ice!
My local ISP was bought out by an evil megacorporation, and they raised the prices and lowered the customer service standards. During the transition, I moved out of their service area and canceled my account. I kept checking my old email address to make sure nobody important was sending stuff there. After several months, I grew tired of this and asked them to close it. I also asked them to remove my personal Web page, since I had long forgotten my FTP password.
Unfortunately, they had apparently lost track of some of their assets during the buyout. They repeatedly denied that the Web server belonged to them or that I had even been one of their customers, despite the fact that the last bill I received had their name and logo on it. I pointed out that {formerisp}.com was registered to them and listed on their Webmail page, and webpages.{formerisp}.com resolved to their netblock, but they still denied responsibility. By cranking up the rudeness, I finally got my complaint escalated to somebody with a clue, it was resolved and forgotten.
Six months later, I got a request for an interview by a company that had pulled my resume off the old site. Sure enough, some moron had apparently restored a backup and my old site along with it! Google still ranked my old site above my new one in a search for my skillset. As you can imagine, I was pissed. But this time around, the evil ISP was even more adamant that the server didn't belong to them.
Time for some vigilante customer service! I meditated until I remembered my FTP password, and replaced my old site with an embellished tale of my troubles with the evil ISP. I used the most unflattering language, threw in some slander and libel for good measure, summed it up with a challenge to permanently remove the page, and pseudonymously emailed the link to tech support. Needless to say, it was taken care of most ricky-tick!
More to the point, Company X can sell as many copies of GPLed software as it wants, but it's still not "first sale" because Company X is not the copyright holder.
Please see both my replies to this comment...
Oh, and by the way... thank you for challenging me on this and not just flaming. I'm still convinced I'm right, but for different reasons than I originally thought. I would not have taken the time to research this had you not been so persistent and articulate.
The court did not, however, invalidate software licenses in general, or state broadly that all license agreements are to be considered sales. It only outlined the conditions under which the transfer of software is considered a sale. Because the transfer of money is explicitly limited by the GPL, it does not meet these criteria. Nothing in the GPL allows Company X (or anyone other than the original copyright holder) to sell the software! In fact, it states explicitly that one may only charge for the actual cost of copying and distribution of the media containing the software (Section 1). Because of this, I do not believe that the right of first sale applies to the situation described in the parent post. Whether the courts would agree with me is, of course, yet to be seen...
OK, I was too hasty in my reply. Referring back to the situation described, it is Company Y that is in violation of the GPL. Apparently you and I have no disagreement there. My contention is that points 4 and 5 of the parent are incorrect.