So, you just fiddle with a few registry keys.
It's as legal as using a highlighter in a book you bought.
I don't know if it is. IANAL, but if you change the registry keys you are modifying the software, which might not be allowed under copyright law (even if you don't copy or distribute the resulting derived work). Using a highlighter in a book is more like adding extra information to the book; if you wanted to, you could write on a separate sheet of paper 'highlight the first paragraph of page 44'. If instead of using a separate sheet you actually write on the book's paper, that's just 'mere aggregation', as the GPL would say. The same would probably apply to making changes or corrections. But changing the Registry, you totally overwrite what was there before.
Maybe there is a legal difference between adding keys to the Registry (aggregation), and changing the value of keys which are part of the copyrighted Windows software (modification).
They're just blackmailing jerks, hoping companies will decide it's not worth the risk of a frivolous lawsuit from MS costing them millions.
If I were a huge multinational using Microsoft software, I would certainly ask my legal department to check whether you could get away with this, and if they said yes, I'd be fairly sure that my company could withstand a lawsuit, frivolous or otherwise. But Microsoft could probably refuse to license software at a discounted price (have to buy it retail) or stop offering support contracts, so you wouldn't want to annoy them.
I don't know. Any copyright lawyers reading Slashdot?
Why would they need to sue you? The server will know how many connections are licensed. When there are as many connections as there are licenses, and someone tries to open a new connection, it will simply fail.
So you just go to Control Panel and increase the number of connections allowed. Or you hack the registry. The point is, is this legal?
In the last two upgrades, fonts have improved dramatically, and I can run Word and Excel (although printing is still a bit sticky).
Which versions of Word and Excel can you run? Office 97 and Office 2000 require Internet Explorer to be installed, and the licensing terms for IE try to stop you running it on any platform other than Windows. This fits in with Microsoft's view that IE is part of the operating system, but it's also a way of effectively tying Office to Windows.
Are the Wine people working on a replacement for the DLLs from Internet Explorer, so that we can run all the MS and non-MS applications that depend on it?
Just out of curiosity, is the per-seat licensing model enforceable? I keep hearing people say that because copyright law covers copying, not use, you can do whatever you like with software you have purchased. OTOH there was a law passed in the US giving legal authority to 'licence manager' programs.
So if you bought a 5-seat licence for Win2k and used it with 6 simultaneous authenticated users, could Microsoft sue you, and what for? Is the situation different inside and outside the US?
Software patents are not yet granted in Europe. However, the EU is considering whether to follow the US system and grant patents on computer programs, which would be damaging to consumers and businesses, as well as software developers. You can help persuade them that this is not such a good idea; check out freepatents.org.
This may be an Inevitable Slashdot Suggestion (along with 'BEOWULF!'), but why not Open Source the Star Trek franchise? Allow anybody to make new series based on TOS, or DS9, or a prequel, or a parallel-universe 'alternative' TNG, or a Borg soap opera (actually, I think Paramount have already done that). What Trek needs is a bit of competition - as long as Paramount have a monopoly on the franchise, they won't do anything adventurous.
Of course, if copyright law were written to help the public rather than a few special interests, the original series would have passed into the public domain many years ago.
Yes, what is 'Earth: Final Conflict'? Is it some script that Gene wrote years ago, and was only recently discovered? I notice that the credits include 'Majel Roddenberry' (Majel, now that's an unusual name...), 'Rod Roddenberry', and 'Lost Script Productions'.
There should be an option for moderators to randomize the order which the posts are displayed. This will get rid of any chronological bias.
When moderating, I always choose 'newest first'. This is probably better than randomizing - if you have a randomized order, there is still a tendency for older posts to get more moderator attention, since they have been seen more times. If you choose newest first, then the first posts to appear are those which haven't been moderated before.
I for one am very, very happy to hear this. I have quite a bit of faith in my Guillemont Ultra TNT
Xenator. It installed like a charm (no driver problems), and delivers some beautiful graphics. If they can continue their winning ways with Hercules, all the better.
Unisyss invested resources in developing LZW, the algorithm used by GIFs.
I don't think they did, they bought it from some other company IIRC. And IBM has a patent on the same algorithm (what better proof of the incompetence of the USPTO?). But in any case, I don't think that just because they invented it, they should be able to stop others using the algorithm. The inventor gets a first-to-market advantage, and being first is often very important. I think this is enough incentive to innovate, since allowing software patents restricts competition too much and makes every software author (and webmaster) liable to legal terrorism.
The LZW algorithm was invented by Terry Welch (based on earlier work by Lempel and Ziv) because it was needed to compress data on hard disks. It wasn't written in order to get a patent, and it is a historical accident that it's used for many images on the Web (LZW is not a particularly good algorithm anyway). Allowing companies like Unisys to patent such algorithms and demand protection money from everybody who uses GIF images is counterproductive. Yes, we should reward people for writing software, but in my opinion copyright does that well enough. Software patents benefit nobody except a handful of huge companies which can afford lawyers and a large portfolio of 'defensive' patents.
Hopefully Corel's recent experience with licence clashes will convince them to go with an existing choice (preferably GPL, LGPL or XFree) rather than inventing YAL. I have argued previously on Slashdot that the whole QPL 'you give us rights to do what we like with your modificiations' thing is unnecessary, since companies require copyright assignment for legal security in any case.
PS/2 E - stripe (because of the green stripe running round the outside)
(I also have a machine named grotto, for similar but obscure reasons.) But most PCs these days don't look as distinctive - and you will probably have many looking the same.
I still have a P90 to put together, maybe I'll name it Dark Star, since right now it's apart, in formless pieces of matter.
Hmm, darkstar, that was the default hostname that Slackware chose for you, back when I used it. Is it still the same now?
I can't think of anything positive that Microsoft has done for the industry.
Whatever you may think of Bill Gates, he saved the world from Apple. For that we should be thankful. Imagine what things would be like if the closed Macintosh, rather than the open PC, were the dominant hardware platform. Bill may try to monopolize software, but at least the hardware is competitive.
If he thinks Microsoft is going open source, maybe his definition of "open source" is different than ours.
Microsoft have said that they are trying to move their business model towards 'software as a service', which is what ESR, Red Hat and others have been pushing for a while now. Of course, they will still try to retain the monopoly advantages of proprietary software, to stop others from eating their lunch.
"Excuse me, sir, but I've noticed that you are committing 21 violations of common dress-sense, three in particular of which will keep you from ever getting laid."
Oh, you mean like a kind of 'lint' for clothes - er, wait a minute...
Its always a bit disturbing when almost every article on BSD gets Linux thrown in
Every article on Unix gets Linux thrown in. Nowadays, even articles on Win2k have the obligatory Linux mention about halfway through. So BSD isn't being picked on here. It would be nice to see more BSD mentions in Linux articles however.
Regardless of the truth, both Adams and Trimble (the Unionist leader and Orange order member) walk a fine line in appeasing the publics need for peace and the terrorists fear of `defeat'.
It's not really fair to lump Trimble together with Adams. The Ulster Unionists (Trimle's party) are staunchly opposed to terrorism. While the Orange Order may be bigots, they are not terrorists. Even the more 'extreme' Democratic Unionists (Ian Paisley's party) are not linked to terrorist groups.
There are parties, such as the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), which are fronts for Loyalist terror groups in the same way that Sinn Fein represents the IRA. But the Ulster Unionists, like the SDLP (the main nationalist party) are not the political wing of any paramilitary organization.
Low end hardware? Bangs per buck? Hit/cost ratio?
This is the Queen of England we're talking about. I don't think she worries about those things.
I've heard that her Majesty is notoriously stingy about spending money (turning lightbulbs off, etc). I don't know whether this applies equally to taxpayers' money and her own money.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I meant legally enforceable.
I don't know if it is. IANAL, but if you change the registry keys you are modifying the software, which might not be allowed under copyright law (even if you don't copy or distribute the resulting derived work). Using a highlighter in a book is more like adding extra information to the book; if you wanted to, you could write on a separate sheet of paper 'highlight the first paragraph of page 44'. If instead of using a separate sheet you actually write on the book's paper, that's just 'mere aggregation', as the GPL would say. The same would probably apply to making changes or corrections. But changing the Registry, you totally overwrite what was there before.
Maybe there is a legal difference between adding keys to the Registry (aggregation), and changing the value of keys which are part of the copyrighted Windows software (modification).
If I were a huge multinational using Microsoft software, I would certainly ask my legal department to check whether you could get away with this, and if they said yes, I'd be fairly sure that my company could withstand a lawsuit, frivolous or otherwise. But Microsoft could probably refuse to license software at a discounted price (have to buy it retail) or stop offering support contracts, so you wouldn't want to annoy them.
I don't know. Any copyright lawyers reading Slashdot?
So you just go to Control Panel and increase the number of connections allowed. Or you hack the registry. The point is, is this legal?
The Slugbots don't reproduce, so that's not really true.
Not so true any more. It's possible to run useful applications on a 100% Microsoft Free(tm) system.
Which versions of Word and Excel can you run? Office 97 and Office 2000 require Internet Explorer to be installed, and the licensing terms for IE try to stop you running it on any platform other than Windows. This fits in with Microsoft's view that IE is part of the operating system, but it's also a way of effectively tying Office to Windows.
Are the Wine people working on a replacement for the DLLs from Internet Explorer, so that we can run all the MS and non-MS applications that depend on it?
Just out of curiosity, is the per-seat licensing model enforceable? I keep hearing people say that because copyright law covers copying, not use, you can do whatever you like with software you have purchased. OTOH there was a law passed in the US giving legal authority to 'licence manager' programs.
So if you bought a 5-seat licence for Win2k and used it with 6 simultaneous authenticated users, could Microsoft sue you, and what for? Is the situation different inside and outside the US?
Software patents are not yet granted in Europe. However, the EU is considering whether to follow the US system and grant patents on computer programs, which would be damaging to consumers and businesses, as well as software developers. You can help persuade them that this is not such a good idea; check out freepatents.org.
This may be an Inevitable Slashdot Suggestion (along with 'BEOWULF!'), but why not Open Source the Star Trek franchise? Allow anybody to make new series based on TOS, or DS9, or a prequel, or a parallel-universe 'alternative' TNG, or a Borg soap opera (actually, I think Paramount have already done that). What Trek needs is a bit of competition - as long as Paramount have a monopoly on the franchise, they won't do anything adventurous.
Of course, if copyright law were written to help the public rather than a few special interests, the original series would have passed into the public domain many years ago.
Yes, what is 'Earth: Final Conflict'? Is it some script that Gene wrote years ago, and was only recently discovered? I notice that the credits include 'Majel Roddenberry' (Majel, now that's an unusual name...), 'Rod Roddenberry', and 'Lost Script Productions'.
When moderating, I always choose 'newest first'. This is probably better than randomizing - if you have a randomized order, there is still a tendency for older posts to get more moderator attention, since they have been seen more times. If you choose newest first, then the first posts to appear are those which haven't been moderated before.
I don't think they did, they bought it from some other company IIRC. And IBM has a patent on the same algorithm (what better proof of the incompetence of the USPTO?). But in any case, I don't think that just because they invented it, they should be able to stop others using the algorithm. The inventor gets a first-to-market advantage, and being first is often very important. I think this is enough incentive to innovate, since allowing software patents restricts competition too much and makes every software author (and webmaster) liable to legal terrorism.
The LZW algorithm was invented by Terry Welch (based on earlier work by Lempel and Ziv) because it was needed to compress data on hard disks. It wasn't written in order to get a patent, and it is a historical accident that it's used for many images on the Web (LZW is not a particularly good algorithm anyway). Allowing companies like Unisys to patent such algorithms and demand protection money from everybody who uses GIF images is counterproductive. Yes, we should reward people for writing software, but in my opinion copyright does that well enough. Software patents benefit nobody except a handful of huge companies which can afford lawyers and a large portfolio of 'defensive' patents.
Hopefully Corel's recent experience with licence clashes will convince them to go with an existing choice (preferably GPL, LGPL or XFree) rather than inventing YAL. I have argued previously on Slashdot that the whole QPL 'you give us rights to do what we like with your modificiations' thing is unnecessary, since companies require copyright assignment for legal security in any case.
- PS/2 Model 80 - behemoth
- PS/2 E - stripe (because of the green stripe running round the outside)
(I also have a machine named grotto, for similar but obscure reasons.) But most PCs these days don't look as distinctive - and you will probably have many looking the same.Hmm, darkstar, that was the default hostname that Slackware chose for you, back when I used it. Is it still the same now?
Whatever you may think of Bill Gates, he saved the world from Apple. For that we should be thankful. Imagine what things would be like if the closed Macintosh, rather than the open PC, were the dominant hardware platform. Bill may try to monopolize software, but at least the hardware is competitive.
Microsoft have said that they are trying to move their business model towards 'software as a service', which is what ESR, Red Hat and others have been pushing for a while now. Of course, they will still try to retain the monopoly advantages of proprietary software, to stop others from eating their lunch.
Oh, you mean like a kind of 'lint' for clothes - er, wait a minute...
Look at the FSF's BSD licence page. It clearly says that the BSDL is a free licence, although it did have a problem with the advertising clause.
Every article on Unix gets Linux thrown in. Nowadays, even articles on Win2k have the obligatory Linux mention about halfway through. So BSD isn't being picked on here. It would be nice to see more BSD mentions in Linux articles however.
And they claim that Zeus is the fastest web server. I wonder how something else would have handled the same load?
He wouldn't accept it because of its dependence on the non-free Qt (Queen toolkit) library.
It's not really fair to lump Trimble together with Adams. The Ulster Unionists (Trimle's party) are staunchly opposed to terrorism. While the Orange Order may be bigots, they are not terrorists. Even the more 'extreme' Democratic Unionists (Ian Paisley's party) are not linked to terrorist groups.
There are parties, such as the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), which are fronts for Loyalist terror groups in the same way that Sinn Fein represents the IRA. But the Ulster Unionists, like the SDLP (the main nationalist party) are not the political wing of any paramilitary organization.
I've heard that her Majesty is notoriously stingy about spending money (turning lightbulbs off, etc). I don't know whether this applies equally to taxpayers' money and her own money.