In case you haven't received spam lately, spammers usually use some random person's email address as a return address (i.e. a joe-job). So the ISP that sent the spam would not get any messages bounced.
Are you saying that having 97% of the desktop operating system market does not make the company a monopoly in that market? What the fuck are you smoking? Don't bother replying, you'll just prove you are an idiot.
He not only doesn't profit from his software, he enables others to profit from it.
That's why you should not license your stuff under anything other than the GPL. The GPL permits both parties equal benefits.
If I make program X, and company Y improves program X, everyone (including me) gets the rights to those improvements. You aren't giving your time away for free by developing free software. You are investing it, and the end result of the process is (hopefully) a program that's much better than what an individual or a small company could create. You can then make money on customizing, supporting, and extending the program to fit someone's particular needs.
RTFA. They got an unspecified "volume discount". I doubt they paid even $20,000 for all the licenses. SCO is not exactly in a position to negotiate there, not to mention it might send the stock price through the roof.
A finding of fact is just that -- a finding of fact. Which basically means that MICROSOFT HAS BEEN FOUND TO BE A MONOPOLY. Of course, that's not a crime in and of itself. A verdict would be a ruling whether Microsoft ABUSED its monopoly power, and how it should be punished. So no, it's not an "alleged" monopoly, it's a real monopoly.
In that case, any EE could design an unbreakable lock in about 10 minutes. Put a keypad on the front and the electronics in the back. To avoid getting the electronics hacked, make the keypad physically or electrically isolated from the rest of circuit. Then, the only way to bypass it is if you know the code - which could be very long.
Yet another confirmation of my theory: Mac zealots tend to be morons.
Looking at your posts, you are most certainly a Mac zealot: you haven't posted a single relevant comment in any non-Apple-related thread for at least a week. Furthermore, if Slashdot's moderators weren't as biased, you would be considered an Apple troll.
Looking at your posts also confirms the notion that you are a moron. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "moron" as "A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education."
This quote describes every Mac zealot quite well. Almost all are childish, obsessive, immature, and whiny. They generally like to put offtopic plugs for Apple in almost every article. They write long justifications for every decision Apple has ever made, including patently stupid decisions. They worship Apple as if it were a religion, when it's just a computer company that happens to make nice-looking and expensive computers. They consider themselves to be smarter and more creative than people who choose to use other platforms, while the reality is quite opposite.
While normal Mac users may like many of Apple's products, Mac zealots tend to irrationally worship Apple. They will falsify data, inflate benchmarks, and write long rants about "greater efficiency" to make Apple computers seem faster than PCs. If an Apple machine turns out to be marginally faster than a top-of-the-line PC at some random benchmark, Mac zealots will make a tremendous deal of that fact. To a Mac zealot, every Apple product is perfect, and any problem with any Apple product is due to the user's stupidity.
If these aren't hallmarks of "stupid," I don't know what is.
EULAs are already unenforcable because they attempt to be a contract, but only show up after the transaction has taken place.
That's not how the law generally stands on this. There have been several cases where click-wrap contracts were held to be perfectly valid. As far as not reading the contract before you pay for the software -- that's generally your problem. You can agree to a contract without ever reading it. I am sure most companies will send you a copy of the EULA if you request one.
IF he could "recall" all the code he contributed, the kernel would be pretty barren. So you couldn't redistribute it. But the GPL doesn't allow "recalls", so it's a moot point.
Why do people like yourself NOT READ THE FRIGGING POST YOU ARE REPLYING TO? That's exactly what I was saying: while you can license the code under as many different licenses as you want, you can't revoke the rights of the user under GPL once you released GPL'd code. Which means that as long as SCO doesn't violate the GPL license terms for nmap, they can still distribute it regardless of the author's wishes. LEARN TO READ, PEOPLE.
User Interface is the hardest part of a program, because 95% of the code and time is spent on user interface.
There are plenty of GUI design tools that let you create a fairly complex GUI in less than half an hour. And some of these are 100% free (as in GPL), such as Qt/Qt Designer.
Of course, if you use a half-assed toolkit like GTK it's about 10 times more work. I don't know why GTK is so popular; even Microsoft's APIs are an order of magnitude better than that POS.
I guess you don't exactly understand how the "auto detect" part comes into play. At least on Mandrake, it automatically detects and configures the printer. So the only thing you have to deal with is CUPS configuration.
You can't just revoke the GPL because you want to. It is automatically revoked if the licensee violates it, but the author has no power to revoke the license. Otherwise, someone could simply pay, for instance, Linus Torvalds a lot of money so he makes Linux proprietary (i.e. revokes its license). This should not be possible.
Well, as a matter of fact CUPS is one of the few projects which actually put some effort into making a GUI. It's not that it would have taken significantly more skills/code/time to make a much better GUI. After all, all the auto-detect code is there. It's just that the programmer didn't think too hard about the interface, and -- most problematically -- didn't think with the user in mind. It's not like it would have taken more than 2 extra minutes of programmer time to put in short explanations of what each option does. That's what ESR is really getting at.
You might be right about solder joints (though if you don't rapidly defrost it it should be OK), but capacitors should not have a problem. I just checked a datasheet for some cheap chinese electrolytic capacitors and they are rated to the same temperature range, -40 to +85 celsius.
I don't consider it morally wrong or fraud if you buy the exact same card from the exact same manufacturer. All you get is a working card -- which is what you were supposed to get in the first place. You don't make money on the transaction. The store doesn't lose money on the transaction. The manufacturer only loses the money it would have lost if it shipped a defective product to the store. I don't see anything wrong here.
Of course, it IS fraud if you put some other product in the box or return something that was out of warranty or abused. It's also wrong if you knew the item was broken before you bought it. But if you got screwed by a manufacturer, why not strike back?
Always gotta love when mac zealots twist the truth. Read what you highlighed above. First, this only applies to Small & Medium Business purchases, not individual users. Second, it only applies to software and peripherals. Third, they still allow you to return it -- with a small restocking fee. This is light-years ahead of what Apple offers.
Never RMA something to a shady company like that. Instead, go to Wal-mart, Staples, or Best Buy, find the same card, buy it, and return your broken one as defective. They'll automatically deduct the money from the manufacturer's account, so the manufacturer will be rightly screwed.
That's not what Apple's "custom configuration" is. Selecting which hard drive you want is not a custom configuration, it's just an option. Selecting power windows on a Honda does not make it a custom car.
Now, if you called Apple up and told them to paint your computer purple with yellow stripes, I can understand why they wouldn't want it back. But when you choose from a list of options, it does not make sense to call that a custom configuration.
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Dude.... lay off the crack.
In case you haven't received spam lately, spammers usually use some random person's email address as a return address (i.e. a joe-job). So the ISP that sent the spam would not get any messages bounced.
Are you saying that having 97% of the desktop operating system market does not make the company a monopoly in that market? What the fuck are you smoking? Don't bother replying, you'll just prove you are an idiot.
Yes. Even more so.
You can easily use an encrypted challenge-response system (with a smartcard) to prevent skimming.
He not only doesn't profit from his software, he enables others to profit from it.
That's why you should not license your stuff under anything other than the GPL. The GPL permits both parties equal benefits.
If I make program X, and company Y improves program X, everyone (including me) gets the rights to those improvements. You aren't giving your time away for free by developing free software. You are investing it, and the end result of the process is (hopefully) a program that's much better than what an individual or a small company could create. You can then make money on customizing, supporting, and extending the program to fit someone's particular needs.
RTFA. They got an unspecified "volume discount". I doubt they paid even $20,000 for all the licenses. SCO is not exactly in a position to negotiate there, not to mention it might send the stock price through the roof.
A finding of fact is just that -- a finding of fact. Which basically means that MICROSOFT HAS BEEN FOUND TO BE A MONOPOLY. Of course, that's not a crime in and of itself. A verdict would be a ruling whether Microsoft ABUSED its monopoly power, and how it should be punished. So no, it's not an "alleged" monopoly, it's a real monopoly.
In that case, any EE could design an unbreakable lock in about 10 minutes. Put a keypad on the front and the electronics in the back. To avoid getting the electronics hacked, make the keypad physically or electrically isolated from the rest of circuit. Then, the only way to bypass it is if you know the code - which could be very long.
Yet another confirmation of my theory: Mac zealots tend to be morons.
Looking at your posts, you are most certainly a Mac zealot: you haven't posted a single relevant comment in any non-Apple-related thread for at least a week. Furthermore, if Slashdot's moderators weren't as biased, you would be considered an Apple troll.
Looking at your posts also confirms the notion that you are a moron. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "moron" as "A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education."
This quote describes every Mac zealot quite well. Almost all are childish, obsessive, immature, and whiny. They generally like to put offtopic plugs for Apple in almost every article. They write long justifications for every decision Apple has ever made, including patently stupid decisions. They worship Apple as if it were a religion, when it's just a computer company that happens to make nice-looking and expensive computers. They consider themselves to be smarter and more creative than people who choose to use other platforms, while the reality is quite opposite.
While normal Mac users may like many of Apple's products, Mac zealots tend to irrationally worship Apple. They will falsify data, inflate benchmarks, and write long rants about "greater efficiency" to make Apple computers seem faster than PCs. If an Apple machine turns out to be marginally faster than a top-of-the-line PC at some random benchmark, Mac zealots will make a tremendous deal of that fact. To a Mac zealot, every Apple product is perfect, and any problem with any Apple product is due to the user's stupidity.
If these aren't hallmarks of "stupid," I don't know what is.
EULAs are already unenforcable because they attempt to be a contract, but only show up after the transaction has taken place.
That's not how the law generally stands on this. There have been several cases where click-wrap contracts were held to be perfectly valid. As far as not reading the contract before you pay for the software -- that's generally your problem. You can agree to a contract without ever reading it. I am sure most companies will send you a copy of the EULA if you request one.
IF he could "recall" all the code he contributed, the kernel would be pretty barren. So you couldn't redistribute it. But the GPL doesn't allow "recalls", so it's a moot point.
Why do people like yourself NOT READ THE FRIGGING POST YOU ARE REPLYING TO? That's exactly what I was saying: while you can license the code under as many different licenses as you want, you can't revoke the rights of the user under GPL once you released GPL'd code. Which means that as long as SCO doesn't violate the GPL license terms for nmap, they can still distribute it regardless of the author's wishes. LEARN TO READ, PEOPLE.
Or, in better English, "Eben Moglen, the lawyer for the Free Software Foundation, spoke at the Harvard Journal of Law [...]"
User Interface is the hardest part of a program, because 95% of the code and time is spent on user interface.
There are plenty of GUI design tools that let you create a fairly complex GUI in less than half an hour. And some of these are 100% free (as in GPL), such as Qt/Qt Designer.
Of course, if you use a half-assed toolkit like GTK it's about 10 times more work. I don't know why GTK is so popular; even Microsoft's APIs are an order of magnitude better than that POS.
I guess you don't exactly understand how the "auto detect" part comes into play. At least on Mandrake, it automatically detects and configures the printer. So the only thing you have to deal with is CUPS configuration.
The policy doesn't apply to computers, you retard. Only to peripherals and software. Take a reading comprehension test.
If the GPL is ruled unenforceable, companies such as Microsoft would be bankrupt (since their EULAs will be even less enforceable). So it won't be.
You can't just revoke the GPL because you want to. It is automatically revoked if the licensee violates it, but the author has no power to revoke the license. Otherwise, someone could simply pay, for instance, Linus Torvalds a lot of money so he makes Linux proprietary (i.e. revokes its license). This should not be possible.
Well, as a matter of fact CUPS is one of the few projects which actually put some effort into making a GUI. It's not that it would have taken significantly more skills/code/time to make a much better GUI. After all, all the auto-detect code is there. It's just that the programmer didn't think too hard about the interface, and -- most problematically -- didn't think with the user in mind. It's not like it would have taken more than 2 extra minutes of programmer time to put in short explanations of what each option does. That's what ESR is really getting at.
You might be right about solder joints (though if you don't rapidly defrost it it should be OK), but capacitors should not have a problem. I just checked a datasheet for some cheap chinese electrolytic capacitors and they are rated to the same temperature range, -40 to +85 celsius.
I don't consider it morally wrong or fraud if you buy the exact same card from the exact same manufacturer. All you get is a working card -- which is what you were supposed to get in the first place. You don't make money on the transaction. The store doesn't lose money on the transaction. The manufacturer only loses the money it would have lost if it shipped a defective product to the store. I don't see anything wrong here.
Of course, it IS fraud if you put some other product in the box or return something that was out of warranty or abused. It's also wrong if you knew the item was broken before you bought it. But if you got screwed by a manufacturer, why not strike back?
Always gotta love when mac zealots twist the truth. Read what you highlighed above. First, this only applies to Small & Medium Business purchases, not individual users. Second, it only applies to software and peripherals. Third, they still allow you to return it -- with a small restocking fee. This is light-years ahead of what Apple offers.
Never RMA something to a shady company like that. Instead, go to Wal-mart, Staples, or Best Buy, find the same card, buy it, and return your broken one as defective. They'll automatically deduct the money from the manufacturer's account, so the manufacturer will be rightly screwed.
That's not what Apple's "custom configuration" is. Selecting which hard drive you want is not a custom configuration, it's just an option. Selecting power windows on a Honda does not make it a custom car.
Now, if you called Apple up and told them to paint your computer purple with yellow stripes, I can understand why they wouldn't want it back. But when you choose from a list of options, it does not make sense to call that a custom configuration.