Well articulated pseudo racism is still racism you fucking arrogant jerk.
Racism? I wasn't aware that Europeans had become so repulsive as to form a separate race of foul-smelling people with crooked teeth. At least I was giving them the benefit of belonging to one of Earth's three major races (and the same as that which I belong to, incidently). So it seems to me as you're the greater racist - listening to you, I'd expect full speciation is right around the corner!
For what it's worth, where were you when the European contingent was insulting Americans? Laughing, I expect? Quite hypocritical to only defend the "racism" one way.
Seriously, though, it seems you're taking this a bit too seriously, unless you're a foul-smelling Eurpoean woman with crooked teeth and hairy legs, at which point I will graciously apologize. If not, learn to laugh at yourself - I make fun of stupid Americans when I'm not here trolling for sensitive Europeans bearing the weight of their collective continental inferiority complex.
And thanks for the well-articulated bit. That was very touching. You really need to work on the insults, though - "fucking arrogant jerk" is so played. I could give you some better suggestions if you like.
A company has obligations to it's shareholders, it's customers and it's employees. Any company that decides to screw one of those three interests for the others will get around to screwing everyone. When you think it's OK to screw people, you screw everyone.
First, a company has obligations to it's shareholders, period. You can say they should have obligations to the others, and that it may ultimately hurt them to disregard the others, but bottom-line, a corporation's job is to make money and obey the law. Nothing else.
Anti competitive behavior screws all three interests at the same time. It screws the share holder by driving out other legitimate investments. It screws the customer by monopoly rents. It screws the employees by destroying competitive employers.
I'll grant the last two, but since the company doesn't care anyway, it's immaterial. The question is, does anti-competitive behavior screw the shareholders? And the answer, assuming they don't do it illegally, is usually no. MSFT seems to do well by it. Utilities do fine. Fact is, the only time it hurts them is if/when they lose the monopoly and they don't know how to compete. But at that point, they've lost anyway so it doesn't matter.
Anti competitive behavior also leads to stagnation, which screws all three intersts again by blocking legitimate industry growth.
Well, again, industry stagnation is a great thing if you have a monopoly - it allows you to maintain revenue without spending money on R&D. Again, MSFT. Detroit automakers in the 70's before Japan moved in (oligopoly instead of monopoly, but worked the same). Works out great. If you're on top, the best thing you can do is freeze the conditions of the game. Hell, that's just common sense, and any CEO who wouldn't do everything in their power to maintain a functional monopoly is an idiot.
I'm not saying this is my worldview of how things should be, but rather how they are. I think the world would be a great place if companies were led by caring, touchy-feely CEO's, but that doesn't make money so it won't happen. I know we all want good ethics to be good business and vice-versa, but wanting it doesn't making it so, and crafting arguments to support that position doesn't make it any more so either. Fact is, our system isn't one that's set up to foster kindness.
And for what it's worth, if you want to see badly treated employees, find a company in a competitive market with razor-thin margins - they're forced to treat their customers *so well* they have no resources to treat employees well even if they wanted. So it could be said that big, bloated monopolies have the best chance, if not the inclination, to treat their employees very well.
...our women know how to shave their legs. Oh, and we wear deodorant. And brush our teeth. And occasionally see the dentist.
So maybe our cell phone system isn't as good. Maybe it's because we have people here with whom you can carry a conversation without being nauseated from their proximity.
Ok your right I have no life and my only joy is herassing people on slashdot. You have shown me I was wrong and that there really is no god. Thank you.
he flip side to that, though, is that there is frequently much higher *opportunity cost* to development than to maintenance... the rush to market, and hence the need for rapid prototyping. How many businesses failed because they were trying to write their code in the "right way" instead of the "right now" way... only to find that before they had finished, some competitor whose system was held together with spit and duct-tape had pulled off a land-grab.
Yeah, that's always the risk - and as you say, damned tough to balance. Probably why most "version 1's" in competitive fields suck, and you hope that decent companies patch it for v2. Hate to spend years making a good program that you have to end up kludging at the end anyway because the good version got outdated...
For what it's worth though, I wonder how many fields are really that competitive. I'm not really a software engineer (I just write stuff to support my research), so my stuff isn't all that mission-critical, there's no chance anyone will ever maintain my code, and no one will beat me to market (since I'm the market!). So I can't really comment on the competitiveness angle, but for custom/contracted software, I'd definitely err on the side of doing it right the first time. It's funny - I always used to think I'd remember how I did something, under-comment the code, forget, have to make changes, and hate myself.;) Do that a couple of times, and you end up commenting like a madman and structuring things cleaner. Assuming you have a boss that lets you spend the time to do it, of course.
...and to make a long story short, that's why I program primarily in perl these days!:-D
No doubt. C may be faster and all, but damn those segfaults!;)
Perhaps he's a Baptist. I had the Junior Pastor from the local Baptist church come by to kindly tell me I was going to a burning, fiery hell if I didn't see things his way. I'm confident that one day, one of us will be proven to be incorrect.
I dunna think so - I was raised baptist, and since we were convinced everyone who didn't agree with us was going to hell, we didn't really make much effort to convince anyone who cared to disagree.;) I've since become a tad more open-minded.
But it's kind of confusing - why would anyone who doesn't care about the people they're attempting to save go through the motions? Whenever I do anything that asinine, there's generally the opportunity of poon-tang theoretically involved. That's why I assumed there was a chick responsible. But would that kind of chick put out anyway? Think McFly!
Really though, a Do Not Call List is more than sufficient; I don't need to show myself a lesser human in the presence of those who sincerely, even if misguided, are trying to help me.
See, that's where I differ - I have no delusion of my own grandeur - or even of my own reasonable humanity.;) But I do make sure to keep the fun out of the realm of the psychologically damaging. And hey, I save the REALLY mean stuff for telemarketers. As you say, at least the religious nuts care enough to try to save me, eh?
Quicker time to develop and easier maintenance, even at the cost of a significant degredation in application performance (within reason, of course) is a REALLY GOOD DEAL. It's not about laziness, it's economics of the simplest sort: all things being equal, lower costs (total costs, of course).
That's true of course - my personal tradeoff is I'll always be a smartass even at the expense of absolute truth.;) The one caveat I will say is that your analysis is 100% true for up-front development, but not necessarily maintenance. Put too many glue layers in and whoever has to maintain that code is either going to cry or hunt you down and kill you. And since you could be maintaining your own code, that could get messy.;)
Do you think this pr0n addiction of yours has anything to do with your hatred of religion that you demonstrated the other day?
Wow, an AC actually *researches* my past to do some psychoanalyzing of my pr0n addiction (uh, alleged). Now, I don't hate religion - I'm just aggrevated by annoying proseltyzers. BIG difference.
And where the hell is the connection there, anyway?
Case in point (your link to Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary). Along with the weird "cheifly British" folk you can also include Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, South Africans, etc... almost the entire English-speaking world outside the US.
Do recall that during and before the 1700's, there were widely accepted (some alternate, some quasi-correct, some flat incorrect) and various spellings for MANY words. The US broke from British custom centuries before the rest of the "British speaking" world you cite.
If anything, it's just a case of divergent evolution from a commonly accepted and relatively, but not completely, modern ancestor of the currently accepted "English" language. See also colo(u)r, t(i|y)re, jail/gaol, curb/kerb, maneuver/manouevre, and many others. As I recall, years ago, most of the discrepancies had reasonably accepted alternate spellings.
Usually, the American spelling is more phonetic. Optimists might say this is an example of typical American efficiency. Pundits might say it's typical American illiteracy. I claim it's typical American obstinance, but hell, it could be all three.
See, having a slightly different language is the price we Americans pay for throwing off the shackles of British hegemony centuries before the British grew weary of their Empire.;)
...is pr0n. 81 channels of pr0n. 11 channels of luscious, VHS pr0n. 70 channels of "tit"tillating UHF pr0n. Hell, expand the spectrum and give me some phreaky microwave pr0n, too. Re-dedicate the unlicensed band and make it the MHP band - MegaHotPr0n.
It seems to me that a Rule 11 motion against SCO and its attorneys would be in order, if SCO didn't properly asses the merits of its case before filing suit. Methinks McBride may have said too much!
That's an interesting point - McBride seems to never clear his comments with the lawyers before opening his mouth. One damning one is that he's effectively suing IBM for possible linux malfeasances because Linus doesn't have any money. He's admitted to a reporter that IBM is just the local deep pockets. Nice going.
There have been a number of class action laws-uits I've noticed of late where the members of the class get little or nothing.
Of *late*??? I am unaware of any time where this was not the case.
Best Buy gets sued by people who didn't understand the terms of it's extended warrenty. Best Buy settles, gives coupons for more crap at best buy to the members of the class.
I love that one. Anyone dumb enough to get the extended warranty probably isn't going to be smart enough to read the contract that comes with their Happy Meal.
It's important to note that many professors "skate" in real life university as well. They give the lectures, and the TAs do all the actual work. Some make themselves available between classes, some dont.
Yeah, I've been that poor TA.;) Even I only saw the prof once at the begin and end of the term.
Calculus - yeah, read the book, do the assignments, complete the exam. Hooray, you know calculus - you pass.
Yeah, personally I preferred that hands-off approach because I was a lazy shit as an undergrad. But that's kind of the idea - get to the point where you can teach yourself. For the sciences and such of course.
Quit whining.
Well, now, I would applaud the guy for taking more of an interest than is necessary. Because of the inherent hindrances of an online univ. anyway, I think it's even more important to keep the profs from being lazy asses, since there's little in the way of checks and balances.
No license enters into it. There was no license involved when I bought Stranger in a Strange Land from a used bookstore. I needed no license to read it. I don't need a license to sell it at a yard sale. If I can't sell it at a yard sale, and I throw it in the free box in the alley, nobody else needs a license to acquire, read, or sell this book.
Then explain to me how selling stripped books is illegal, in a way that is self-consistent with what you just said.
The physical object of the book is, indeed, a license of the work it contains. This license was transfered to you when you bought "Stranger" from a legitimate license-holder.
Copyright is not license.
An instance of a copyright involves an implicitly granted license. If this license is returned or revoked, the object (ie book) may no longer be legally used. This is what happens with stripped books. This is what happened with the sewing patterns.
This sewing thing is just like if I bought a hard drive off ebay and it had some software on it. I have no existing license agreement with the copyright holder, and I just found some software. Can I legally use it? Nooooo.... (Yes I know that ebay has restrictions against this thing now, but hypothetically). Same thing here - physical manifestation of a copyrighted work, where the owner kept the original license before ditching the media. Or if you like, if I find a windows install disc, can I legally use it? Once again, no! What all of these examples show is that the possession of the physical media is IRRELEVANT and grants no rights alone. In your case, the rightful license-holder of the book transferred his rights to you legally, and that's different.
I'm guessing you're new around here. Slashbots don't bother to read articles; they just see the words "Microsoft" and "patent" on the same page and start frothing at the keyboard.
I'm sorry, this discussion board is specifically for people who have never read a patent filing.;)
I've said it a hundred times on here, you can't patent an idea, only the specific implementation of an idea.
You're right, in that that's the general idea of the patent system - but specific incidents have proven this to be no longer necessarily the case. The most oft-cited and egregious example is the one-click patent. If ever there was a patent on an idea, it's that one. If I were Ford, I'd go patent an engine with more than 40 MPG, because it's the same thing: efficiency of use. And that isn't an implementation.
There has been an interesting and similar situation with recyclers who handle the US Postal Service material. Many people join those book and CD clubs that automatically send stuff, hoping that you'll just pay for it. Many, though, return those to the company - or so they think.
Wow, that's really cool. You're right, pretty much the same concept - even more interesting though, because it's legal to sell it if you call it one thing (recycled plastic), but not another (a CD). I wonder if they could post the following description on ebay:
5" disc of recycled plastic - adorned with the letters M-E-T-A-L-L-I-C-A. Useful as coaster.
Can you sell a used book without the copyright owner's permission?
Having not signed anything to the contrary, yes.
the only thing copyright prevents the buyer from doing is copying it.
Not actually. Applied to a legally licensed copy, that is true. However, again, see the argument on stripped books, the sale of which is ILLEGAL. It's the same thing - an unlicensed, illegitimate copy of something being sold. They're both illegal. You can argue that it shouldn't be that way, but it is. Do a search on "stripped books" if you don't believe me.
You don't need the copyright holder's permission to sell. You only need permission to copy, perform, or create derivitive works.
Quite right. However, your analysis applies to something that is legitimately licensed copies, which these sewing patterns are not. The question in this, which is what makes it so much of a brainbender: by using a non-licensed copy of something, are you a pirate?
Ostensibly, the store is transferring the rights of the "original" back to the manufacturer - in effect, the product was "de-licensed," at which point it is supposed to be worthless, and is disposed of as such. Clearly, however, it wasn't rendered unusable. So, is using something that doesn't have a valid license the same or different from making a copy and THEN using something that doesn't have a valid license?
I think it's much the same. Consider this - let's say I have a site-license for some software on my servers, and I let that license expire. Now let's say I use it. Note that I have not illegally copied the software - it was copied quite legally, when it was licensed, by the company who licensed it to me. But now, can I use it without breaking the law? Of course not.
So, ultimately, it is ILLEGAL to use something that is not legitimately licensed, whether you or someone else made the copies. See the "stripped book" argument made by others in this thread.
That's not to say the DMCA applies here - it's hard to suggest anyone's reverse-engineering sewing patterns or something - but it's very likely against the law to use or especially sell them.
I see your point. I dont really agree with you though. I think the reason FM didnt make a lot of noise about ATI's 'cheat' is because ATI did a very small change. Just changed the ordering of certain instructions in a single shader to make the execution more efficient.. they didnt change the visual output (IIRC).
That's true, the nVidia/ATI "cheats" weren't completely parallel, but (I *think*) it was still 3Dmark specific, wasn't it? If not, then that certainly mitigates things, but I'm of the opinion that anything that targets 3DMark is a cheat. To me, doesn't matter if it's what ATI did or if it's displaying a smiley-face at 2000 fpm. I think anything app-specific is bad if that app is a benchmark.
I dont think futuremark lost any credibility through this because I honestly dont think nVidia payed them any money, but if they did then FM are certainly whores as well.
I'll agree with you there completely - if they really didn't get paid, then they're a poor bunch of guys who got lawyered. I'm a bit more cynical, and while I admit I have *no* evidence, their turn-around just seemed too fast, and they don't seem nearly bitter enough.;) But I suspect some enterprising tech-journalist will find out one way or the other.
I can speak from experience (as a religous door knocker) that I don't give a damn if you are going to hell. You can think your all clever at the door, but I just move on and knock on the next one. No sweat.
Yeah, that makes sense. I suppose you're just doing it to get with the one JW chick in the country who actually puts out, huh, AC?
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Racism? I wasn't aware that Europeans had become so repulsive as to form a separate race of foul-smelling people with crooked teeth. At least I was giving them the benefit of belonging to one of Earth's three major races (and the same as that which I belong to, incidently). So it seems to me as you're the greater racist - listening to you, I'd expect full speciation is right around the corner!
For what it's worth, where were you when the European contingent was insulting Americans? Laughing, I expect? Quite hypocritical to only defend the "racism" one way.
Seriously, though, it seems you're taking this a bit too seriously, unless you're a foul-smelling Eurpoean woman with crooked teeth and hairy legs, at which point I will graciously apologize. If not, learn to laugh at yourself - I make fun of stupid Americans when I'm not here trolling for sensitive Europeans bearing the weight of their collective continental inferiority complex.
And thanks for the well-articulated bit. That was very touching. You really need to work on the insults, though - "fucking arrogant jerk" is so played. I could give you some better suggestions if you like.
Could you get Mutti's strudel recipe? I hear he's tight with her.
First, a company has obligations to it's shareholders, period. You can say they should have obligations to the others, and that it may ultimately hurt them to disregard the others, but bottom-line, a corporation's job is to make money and obey the law. Nothing else.
Anti competitive behavior screws all three interests at the same time. It screws the share holder by driving out other legitimate investments. It screws the customer by monopoly rents. It screws the employees by destroying competitive employers.
I'll grant the last two, but since the company doesn't care anyway, it's immaterial. The question is, does anti-competitive behavior screw the shareholders? And the answer, assuming they don't do it illegally, is usually no. MSFT seems to do well by it. Utilities do fine. Fact is, the only time it hurts them is if/when they lose the monopoly and they don't know how to compete. But at that point, they've lost anyway so it doesn't matter.
Anti competitive behavior also leads to stagnation, which screws all three intersts again by blocking legitimate industry growth.
Well, again, industry stagnation is a great thing if you have a monopoly - it allows you to maintain revenue without spending money on R&D. Again, MSFT. Detroit automakers in the 70's before Japan moved in (oligopoly instead of monopoly, but worked the same). Works out great. If you're on top, the best thing you can do is freeze the conditions of the game. Hell, that's just common sense, and any CEO who wouldn't do everything in their power to maintain a functional monopoly is an idiot.
I'm not saying this is my worldview of how things should be, but rather how they are. I think the world would be a great place if companies were led by caring, touchy-feely CEO's, but that doesn't make money so it won't happen. I know we all want good ethics to be good business and vice-versa, but wanting it doesn't making it so, and crafting arguments to support that position doesn't make it any more so either. Fact is, our system isn't one that's set up to foster kindness.
And for what it's worth, if you want to see badly treated employees, find a company in a competitive market with razor-thin margins - they're forced to treat their customers *so well* they have no resources to treat employees well even if they wanted. So it could be said that big, bloated monopolies have the best chance, if not the inclination, to treat their employees very well.
So maybe our cell phone system isn't as good. Maybe it's because we have people here with whom you can carry a conversation without being nauseated from their proximity.
;)
Glad I can help. Now worship me instead, my son.
Yeah, that's always the risk - and as you say, damned tough to balance. Probably why most "version 1's" in competitive fields suck, and you hope that decent companies patch it for v2. Hate to spend years making a good program that you have to end up kludging at the end anyway because the good version got outdated...
For what it's worth though, I wonder how many fields are really that competitive. I'm not really a software engineer (I just write stuff to support my research), so my stuff isn't all that mission-critical, there's no chance anyone will ever maintain my code, and no one will beat me to market (since I'm the market!). So I can't really comment on the competitiveness angle, but for custom/contracted software, I'd definitely err on the side of doing it right the first time. It's funny - I always used to think I'd remember how I did something, under-comment the code, forget, have to make changes, and hate myself. ;) Do that a couple of times, and you end up commenting like a madman and structuring things cleaner. Assuming you have a boss that lets you spend the time to do it, of course.
No doubt. C may be faster and all, but damn those segfaults! ;)
I dunna think so - I was raised baptist, and since we were convinced everyone who didn't agree with us was going to hell, we didn't really make much effort to convince anyone who cared to disagree. ;) I've since become a tad more open-minded.
But it's kind of confusing - why would anyone who doesn't care about the people they're attempting to save go through the motions? Whenever I do anything that asinine, there's generally the opportunity of poon-tang theoretically involved. That's why I assumed there was a chick responsible. But would that kind of chick put out anyway? Think McFly!
Really though, a Do Not Call List is more than sufficient; I don't need to show myself a lesser human in the presence of those who sincerely, even if misguided, are trying to help me.
See, that's where I differ - I have no delusion of my own grandeur - or even of my own reasonable humanity. ;) But I do make sure to keep the fun out of the realm of the psychologically damaging. And hey, I save the REALLY mean stuff for telemarketers. As you say, at least the religious nuts care enough to try to save me, eh?
That's true of course - my personal tradeoff is I'll always be a smartass even at the expense of absolute truth. ;) The one caveat I will say is that your analysis is 100% true for up-front development, but not necessarily maintenance. Put too many glue layers in and whoever has to maintain that code is either going to cry or hunt you down and kill you. And since you could be maintaining your own code, that could get messy. ;)
And that leaves you with an application having an efficiency similar to that of a big SUV. OK, so I do it too, but that's no excuse. ;)
pr0n = bad,
siskbc = pr0n,
ergo siskbc = bad
qed
Great proof there Feynman.
Wow, an AC actually *researches* my past to do some psychoanalyzing of my pr0n addiction (uh, alleged). Now, I don't hate religion - I'm just aggrevated by annoying proseltyzers. BIG difference.
And where the hell is the connection there, anyway?
Do recall that during and before the 1700's, there were widely accepted (some alternate, some quasi-correct, some flat incorrect) and various spellings for MANY words. The US broke from British custom centuries before the rest of the "British speaking" world you cite.
If anything, it's just a case of divergent evolution from a commonly accepted and relatively, but not completely, modern ancestor of the currently accepted "English" language. See also colo(u)r, t(i|y)re, jail/gaol, curb/kerb, maneuver/manouevre, and many others. As I recall, years ago, most of the discrepancies had reasonably accepted alternate spellings.
Usually, the American spelling is more phonetic. Optimists might say this is an example of typical American efficiency. Pundits might say it's typical American illiteracy. I claim it's typical American obstinance, but hell, it could be all three.
See, having a slightly different language is the price we Americans pay for throwing off the shackles of British hegemony centuries before the British grew weary of their Empire. ;)
...is pr0n. 81 channels of pr0n. 11 channels of luscious, VHS pr0n. 70 channels of "tit"tillating UHF pr0n. Hell, expand the spectrum and give me some phreaky microwave pr0n, too. Re-dedicate the unlicensed band and make it the MHP band - MegaHotPr0n.
...when you multiply 6 times 9?
That's an interesting point - McBride seems to never clear his comments with the lawyers before opening his mouth. One damning one is that he's effectively suing IBM for possible linux malfeasances because Linus doesn't have any money. He's admitted to a reporter that IBM is just the local deep pockets. Nice going.
Of *late*??? I am unaware of any time where this was not the case.
Best Buy gets sued by people who didn't understand the terms of it's extended warrenty. Best Buy settles, gives coupons for more crap at best buy to the members of the class.
I love that one. Anyone dumb enough to get the extended warranty probably isn't going to be smart enough to read the contract that comes with their Happy Meal.
Yeah, I've been that poor TA. ;) Even I only saw the prof once at the begin and end of the term.
Calculus - yeah, read the book, do the assignments, complete the exam. Hooray, you know calculus - you pass.
Yeah, personally I preferred that hands-off approach because I was a lazy shit as an undergrad. But that's kind of the idea - get to the point where you can teach yourself. For the sciences and such of course.
Quit whining.
Well, now, I would applaud the guy for taking more of an interest than is necessary. Because of the inherent hindrances of an online univ. anyway, I think it's even more important to keep the profs from being lazy asses, since there's little in the way of checks and balances.
Then explain to me how selling stripped books is illegal, in a way that is self-consistent with what you just said.
The physical object of the book is, indeed, a license of the work it contains. This license was transfered to you when you bought "Stranger" from a legitimate license-holder.
Copyright is not license.
An instance of a copyright involves an implicitly granted license. If this license is returned or revoked, the object (ie book) may no longer be legally used. This is what happens with stripped books. This is what happened with the sewing patterns.
This sewing thing is just like if I bought a hard drive off ebay and it had some software on it. I have no existing license agreement with the copyright holder, and I just found some software. Can I legally use it? Nooooo.... (Yes I know that ebay has restrictions against this thing now, but hypothetically). Same thing here - physical manifestation of a copyrighted work, where the owner kept the original license before ditching the media. Or if you like, if I find a windows install disc, can I legally use it? Once again, no! What all of these examples show is that the possession of the physical media is IRRELEVANT and grants no rights alone. In your case, the rightful license-holder of the book transferred his rights to you legally, and that's different.
I'm sorry, this discussion board is specifically for people who have never read a patent filing. ;)
I've said it a hundred times on here, you can't patent an idea, only the specific implementation of an idea.
You're right, in that that's the general idea of the patent system - but specific incidents have proven this to be no longer necessarily the case. The most oft-cited and egregious example is the one-click patent. If ever there was a patent on an idea, it's that one. If I were Ford, I'd go patent an engine with more than 40 MPG, because it's the same thing: efficiency of use. And that isn't an implementation.
Wow, that's really cool. You're right, pretty much the same concept - even more interesting though, because it's legal to sell it if you call it one thing (recycled plastic), but not another (a CD). I wonder if they could post the following description on ebay:
5" disc of recycled plastic - adorned with the letters M-E-T-A-L-L-I-C-A. Useful as coaster.
Yes.
Can you sell a used book without the copyright owner's permission?
Having not signed anything to the contrary, yes.
the only thing copyright prevents the buyer from doing is copying it.
Not actually. Applied to a legally licensed copy, that is true. However, again, see the argument on stripped books, the sale of which is ILLEGAL. It's the same thing - an unlicensed, illegitimate copy of something being sold. They're both illegal. You can argue that it shouldn't be that way, but it is. Do a search on "stripped books" if you don't believe me.
Quite right. However, your analysis applies to something that is legitimately licensed copies, which these sewing patterns are not. The question in this, which is what makes it so much of a brainbender: by using a non-licensed copy of something, are you a pirate?
Ostensibly, the store is transferring the rights of the "original" back to the manufacturer - in effect, the product was "de-licensed," at which point it is supposed to be worthless, and is disposed of as such. Clearly, however, it wasn't rendered unusable. So, is using something that doesn't have a valid license the same or different from making a copy and THEN using something that doesn't have a valid license?
I think it's much the same. Consider this - let's say I have a site-license for some software on my servers, and I let that license expire. Now let's say I use it. Note that I have not illegally copied the software - it was copied quite legally, when it was licensed, by the company who licensed it to me. But now, can I use it without breaking the law? Of course not.
So, ultimately, it is ILLEGAL to use something that is not legitimately licensed, whether you or someone else made the copies. See the "stripped book" argument made by others in this thread.
That's not to say the DMCA applies here - it's hard to suggest anyone's reverse-engineering sewing patterns or something - but it's very likely against the law to use or especially sell them.
That's true, the nVidia/ATI "cheats" weren't completely parallel, but (I *think*) it was still 3Dmark specific, wasn't it? If not, then that certainly mitigates things, but I'm of the opinion that anything that targets 3DMark is a cheat. To me, doesn't matter if it's what ATI did or if it's displaying a smiley-face at 2000 fpm. I think anything app-specific is bad if that app is a benchmark.
I dont think futuremark lost any credibility through this because I honestly dont think nVidia payed them any money, but if they did then FM are certainly whores as well.
I'll agree with you there completely - if they really didn't get paid, then they're a poor bunch of guys who got lawyered. I'm a bit more cynical, and while I admit I have *no* evidence, their turn-around just seemed too fast, and they don't seem nearly bitter enough. ;) But I suspect some enterprising tech-journalist will find out one way or the other.
That might backfire.
No, I stand facing them.
Yeah, that makes sense. I suppose you're just doing it to get with the one JW chick in the country who actually puts out, huh, AC?