But really, a copyright and its terms would be just as enforcable on open source code as it would be for a fiction, paperback book, wouldn't it?
A paperback book has a sort of built in copy deterrant: it's really hard to make a copy of it. I mean, print is analog, so to make a copy of a paperback book you'd have to either: 1) Photocopy every page, 2) Scan and OCR, then proofread every page or 3) Type the book into your computer manually.
It comes down to an economic question, is it really worth someone's time to make that copy rather than just pay $7 for a legal copy? In the case of books for the most part, the answer is no.
For software, it's much easier to copy, so the answer in many cases is yes, the time spent cracking or copying is worth it. Hence the only deterrants to copying software, even open source, are either legal penalties or moral qualms.
At Indiana University, we get almost all Microsoft products (including VS.NET) for $5/CD or for free over the web. Of course, we sold our souls to them for this deal.
It's an interesting thing really, the whole issue of whether recording artists are employees or not. Most record contracts read like employment contracts: the artist has to show up at specified times, has to do certain things, etc. etc.
However, the record companies do not want to have artists as employees because they would be required to pay them some sort of guaranteed compensation. As it is, most contracted artists don't receive a regular paycheck of any type for the work they have done for record companies.
Why? Because they aren't employed, technically speaking. If they were employed, the record companies would lose out on a lot of money that they want/need to keep.
This is a big big deal for the record companies. It has come up in the past, but they always tended to strong-arm the artists, because there were no alternatives.
Now there are alternatives (p2p,etc.) so it should be interesting to see what happens.
While the band holds the original copyright to the song in idea form, often the record company will almost always own the copyright to the recorded form, which is what you are ripping and distributing.
The band can give you permission to cover their song for example, or even record a cover of their song and redistribute it, but they can't give permission to rip and redistribute a recording of their music that they don't own.
Actually, given that you know the positions of the balls at the beginning of the game (assuming that you specify what game you're playing), it's pretty easy to track them if you know where they start. This can even be done fairly well with people, who are much more complex in their movement patterns than billard balls.
In fact, you could do LOTS of useful things with a system like this. Combine it with two other cameras that get side views of the table, and the computer can get the angle and location of your cue and predict what will happen if you hit the cue ball at this angle with varying levels of force.
The only thing you'd have a problem with is predicting what would be affected by varying levels of chalk on the tip of the cue, but if you played consistently, the system could be trained to predict very well.
Hey, this would be a good topic for my thesis, and a lot more fun than some other topics:-D
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IIRC, Tony Hawk 3 was had online capabilites on PS2, you could hook up an ethernet adapter or modem to the USB port and play online.
Um.. I believe the population of the US is approximately 260 Million.
At Indiana University, we get almost all Microsoft products (including VS.NET) for $5/CD or for free over the web. Of course, we sold our souls to them for this deal.
It's an interesting thing really, the whole issue of whether recording artists are employees or not. Most record contracts read like employment contracts: the artist has to show up at specified times, has to do certain things, etc. etc.
However, the record companies do not want to have artists as employees because they would be required to pay them some sort of guaranteed compensation. As it is, most contracted artists don't receive a regular paycheck of any type for the work they have done for record companies.
Why? Because they aren't employed, technically speaking. If they were employed, the record companies would lose out on a lot of money that they want/need to keep.
This is a big big deal for the record companies. It has come up in the past, but they always tended to strong-arm the artists, because there were no alternatives.
Now there are alternatives (p2p,etc.) so it should be interesting to see what happens.
While the band holds the original copyright to the song in idea form, often the record company will almost always own the copyright to the recorded form, which is what you are ripping and distributing.
The band can give you permission to cover their song for example, or even record a cover of their song and redistribute it, but they can't give permission to rip and redistribute a recording of their music that they don't own.
Actually, given that you know the positions of the balls at the beginning of the game (assuming that you specify what game you're playing), it's pretty easy to track them if you know where they start. This can even be done fairly well with people, who are much more complex in their movement patterns than billard balls.
:-D
In fact, you could do LOTS of useful things with a system like this. Combine it with two other cameras that get side views of the table, and the computer can get the angle and location of your cue and predict what will happen if you hit the cue ball at this angle with varying levels of force.
The only thing you'd have a problem with is predicting what would be affected by varying levels of chalk on the tip of the cue, but if you played consistently, the system could be trained to predict very well.
Hey, this would be a good topic for my thesis, and a lot more fun than some other topics