AC: This is, (un)fortunately just the way the law works. It's nothing to do with the GPL and it's wonderfully clear.
No, that's not how the law works. The legal definition of "distribution" is completely against what they claim there. For example, if Walmart or the US Marine Corp sends an email to 50,000 employees, that is DISTRIBUTION, even though the recipients were all part of the same organization. "Distribution" doesn't mean ownership was transferred. If I pass out something to 10 people, I've distributed it, even if I still own it and expect them to give it back.
And it's not "wonderfully clear" either. Nothing that's self-contradictory is clear. It says "Providing copies to off-site contractors is distribution", but what if those contractors are themselves part of the organization?
con the people who liked the book to create the pre movie hype with false expectations.
The reverse has happened too. "Forrest Gump" was far better in the movie adaptation than in the original book.
It's wrong to try holding a film to a book's plotline, because it would take 8 hours to get through an average 300 page novel...
The one that comes to mind is the sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World
You should've anticipated that. The original "Jurassic Park" movie was so different from the book version, that the sequel could hardly have been similar.
In fact, the FSF says that everyone has the right to redistribute the binary you sold them
Yes, they could redistribute the exact binary they recieved. But they'd be more likely to first recompile it to eliminate the "shareware" nagging that starts 30 days after install.
Spreading around unmodified copies still containing that message wouldn't bother the shareware guy much; it's the fact that the nag can be legally removed which renders his business prospects negligible. (Although 2 or 3 paid registrations is better than nothing...)
Why won't Slashdot accept the URL above in a regular <a href=""> link??
I mastered the Pod Racer demo to the point that I could beat it using two buttons
Pod Racing is sorta a bad subject for a game. The whole point is that you're moving so fast that you must steer around obstacles before they even come into view- so it's all track memorization, nothing more.
(It also wouldn't be an entertaining race to watch from the stands!)
If you're dual-booting to run one single game, memory corruption is unlikely to be a real bother. (... "Windows98 makes an excellent gaming platform for 90 minutes at a time"...)
For some games, win98 can be quite a bit faster. Some of its graphics functions are faster, and of course it leaves more RAM free than XP. But, DirectX 9 probably won't install on it, and that's the real killer.
It is plausible that the world of the future is still respectful of humanity,
Uh, did you pay attention to the movie? The society presented was not one that respected digity or privacy. Plus, the kind of psychological testing they go through is an invasion of privacy.
As far as the weight, look at the Olympics. I've seen guys lift MORE than their weight straight up, so it is believeable that one can lift equal their weight horizonally...
Wrong. It's not a matter of strength, but balance. No matter how strong you are, you can't stand with your feet together and hold a person of nearly your own weight at arms length in front of you. You could be an Olympic weightlifter or a titanium statue for all I care; you will tip over if the combined center-of-gravity of you + the weight is not between your own feet.
The only way Roy could've held Decker at the end is (a) Roy's feet are nailed to the roof, (b) Roy is made of steel, (c) Decker is made of hollow aluminium, or (d) Harrison Ford was standing on an off-camera platform.
Now, maybe Roy was a special replicant, stronger and therefore heavier than all the others, which is why he avoided human interaction... maybe...
No it is not. Blender was an oddball case, and not a useful business model for others to follow. It was a fully-developed working commercial product with an established following, whose owners decided to give a paid GPL-release when the program was discontinued.
Being in a firefight still does not qualify one as Commander-in-Chief.
You're not paying attention. The topic is about what soldiers will prefer:
"
If I were a soldier that I would prefer a decorated war veteran as commander-in-chief"
ALL voters need a competent commander-in-chief to defend their national interest; active military are no different from anyone else in that regard. But servicemen may have a specific preference for another veteran, on the theory that he'll better understand and care for their needs (on and off the battlefield).
Oh and incidentally, military coutesy dictates that members of any military service DO salute the Presiident of the United States.
No, it does not. Lincoln never saluted Grant. Roosevelt and Eisenhower never expected salutes. You do NOT salute your superior if he's out of uniform. And is the President issued a uniform...?
I pity the enlisted man or officer who's superior catches him
A custom invented by Ronald Regan, whose service in the Army's Hollywood division didn't teach him any better.
And how many companies in Iraq have a SIPRnet connection? Even in US bases, it's hard for a Private to get on SIPRnet. That's for important, secret work, not puny little voting.
I doubt the banks would trust a technology that is easily fooled/spoofed.. no?
You are correct that personal finances are actually more important than votes, but voting operates under different constraints of mistrust.
(1) You, the voter, are not allowed to hold onto a reciept of how you voted. You must not be able to prove to other people that you voted for a specific candidate, because then votes would be sold on ebay.
(2) If your bank account is siphoned away, you notice it and complain to the police. If your vote is redirected from one candidate to another, you probably can't even detect the crime.
They have no problem with you charging whatever the market will bear, provided you provide the source code, at cost to transmit it, to anyone you give the binary to.
And if you do provide the source code, then somebody else will compile & distribute it, so that pretty soon the market won't bear any cost from you.
So although you can theoretically charge money for GPLed binaries, it'll never work anything like a conventional paid or shareware business model*. Look at the FSF's offer to sell you software. Clearly, that's hardly a sale at all- more just a thinly disguised charitable contribution.
* The only way shareware could work with GPLed software if the actual value comes not from the code, but from other copyrighted datafiles included with it, such as the graphics for a game.
the Democrats wouldn't have invaded Iraq? John Kerry would have.
That link doesn't support your claim. It doesn't detract from it either- it's actually irrelevant.
It says nothing about what Gore or Kerry would've done if he was president. It DOES say that Kerry would've voted to give the president authority to use force against Iraq, but that's actually something else.
Elsewhere, Gore has explained that if he were president, he wouldn't have attacked Iraq. In fact he was giving major anti-war speeches back in 2002 (which were ignored by the media, except when they decided to call him an unkempt lunatic)
(And remember that in 1999, Gore said he'd be open to the idea of sending the US military to build democracy in other countries. Bush disagreed, and promised never to do that)
Coalition to fight in Iraq included more countries this time than in '91.
That's a total lie. If you hadn't said "to fight", it'd be arguably true, because there were a number of tiny countries that approved the US attack without joining in. But the number that actually fought there this time was much smaller.
Cripes, people, learn the difference between the two. Copyrights and patents aren't the same thing with different terms of expiration.
Nothing you said even approximates a refutation to my claim. Algorithims are not copyrightable today. If they could be, it would be even worse than allowing them to be patented (like they are today).
. I think what the original poster meant was that specific algorithm code should be copyright protected,
If you decide that someone meant something different than what he actually wrote, then don't attack me for disagreeing with his real words.
Game data is not released under GPL. This is obvisly a mayor flaw, and will render the game unplayable.
Wrong. The game is still playable.
You can download a free demo to acquire "game data", and play that with the GPLed executable. You can find a 3rd party who's made free "game data", and play with that. You can even pay for the original game itself, and use that "game data" with the GPLed executables. Valid old copies of Doom/Quake go for $1.99 each.
GPLing is important for old software, because otherwise it'll tend to become unrunnable on future computers. But the game data has no such needs. If an artist were to hypothetically "upgrade it for newer machines", he may as well start over from scratch.
PS. Note that one of the games on this list, Golgotha, is backwards from your claim: they released only the game data, and no working code (because they had none).
Also, delivering the source code as mandated by the GPL would be a problem, where would you store it?
On an offer, valid for at least 3 years, to deliver the source code to any third party, on a medium customarily used for software exchange, for not more than the cost of shipping and handling.
Is just over two months from now immediate enough?
Are you implying that a Kerry presidency would treat patents any differently?
Sorry, no. The Rep and Dem parties haven't made any true difference on Intellectual Property law in their platforms. Bills like the Sonny Bono Act get bi-partisan support.
It's even possible that Democratic politicians would favor Eolas in this case, since the Clinton adminstration demonstrated itself to be anti-Microsoft (relative to the successive Republican leadership, that is). They might be inclined to "rescue a common-inventor from big business"
since 1 gigabyte in storage space costs, what, a handful of glass beads nowadays,
The benefit of GmailFS wouldn't be the space itself, but the fact that it's transparently portable- that you can access it from any (Linux) PC on the internet.
Note that if "broadband" ISPs had slightly less-restrictive terms of service, then this advantage would be irrelevant too, because you could easily place your own hard drive available for remote mounting.
That sounds a little illogical to me, because of the following counterexamples:
Quite irrelevant "examples". The keyword is "service". Gmail is a free SERVICE, while Linux is a free PROGRAM, and Windows is a non-free PROGRAM.
Once you acquire a program, it no longer has anything to do with the original author. How you use it doesn't negatively impact him, and he has no ability (or right) to "discontinue" your possession of the program. But Google continues to power the Gmail service, indefinately. They can terminate it anytime they want, so you must continually stay on their good side.
Slashdot Mirror
AC: This is, (un)fortunately just the way the law works. It's nothing to do with the GPL and it's wonderfully clear.
No, that's not how the law works. The legal definition of "distribution" is completely against what they claim there. For example, if Walmart or the US Marine Corp sends an email to 50,000 employees, that is DISTRIBUTION, even though the recipients were all part of the same organization. "Distribution" doesn't mean ownership was transferred. If I pass out something to 10 people, I've distributed it, even if I still own it and expect them to give it back.
And it's not "wonderfully clear" either. Nothing that's self-contradictory is clear. It says "Providing copies to off-site contractors is distribution", but what if those contractors are themselves part of the organization?
con the people who liked the book to create the pre movie hype with false expectations.
The reverse has happened too. "Forrest Gump" was far better in the movie adaptation than in the original book.
It's wrong to try holding a film to a book's plotline, because it would take 8 hours to get through an average 300 page novel...
The one that comes to mind is the sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World
You should've anticipated that. The original "Jurassic Park" movie was so different from the book version, that the sequel could hardly have been similar.
In fact, the FSF says that everyone has the right to redistribute the binary you sold them
Yes, they could redistribute the exact binary they recieved. But they'd be more likely to first recompile it to eliminate the "shareware" nagging that starts 30 days after install.
Spreading around unmodified copies still containing that message wouldn't bother the shareware guy much; it's the fact that the nag can be legally removed which renders his business prospects negligible. (Although 2 or 3 paid registrations is better than nothing...)
Why won't Slashdot accept the URL above in a regular <a href=""> link??
Maybe you just can't write HTML?
I mastered the Pod Racer demo to the point that I could beat it using two buttons
Pod Racing is sorta a bad subject for a game. The whole point is that you're moving so fast that you must steer around obstacles before they even come into view- so it's all track memorization, nothing more.
(It also wouldn't be an entertaining race to watch from the stands!)
It doesn't take much to pollute 98's memory.
...)
If you're dual-booting to run one single game, memory corruption is unlikely to be a real bother. (... "Windows98 makes an excellent gaming platform for 90 minutes at a time"
For some games, win98 can be quite a bit faster. Some of its graphics functions are faster, and of course it leaves more RAM free than XP. But, DirectX 9 probably won't install on it, and that's the real killer.
It is plausible that the world of the future is still respectful of humanity,
Uh, did you pay attention to the movie? The society presented was not one that respected digity or privacy. Plus, the kind of psychological testing they go through is an invasion of privacy.
As far as the weight, look at the Olympics. I've seen guys lift MORE than their weight straight up, so it is believeable that one can lift equal their weight horizonally...
Wrong. It's not a matter of strength, but balance. No matter how strong you are, you can't stand with your feet together and hold a person of nearly your own weight at arms length in front of you. You could be an Olympic weightlifter or a titanium statue for all I care; you will tip over if the combined center-of-gravity of you + the weight is not between your own feet.
The only way Roy could've held Decker at the end is (a) Roy's feet are nailed to the roof, (b) Roy is made of steel, (c) Decker is made of hollow aluminium, or (d) Harrison Ford was standing on an off-camera platform.
Now, maybe Roy was a special replicant, stronger and therefore heavier than all the others, which is why he avoided human interaction... maybe...
AC: which included Enemy Territory and I definately paid money for it.
Sucker.
Blender is a great example
No it is not. Blender was an oddball case, and not a useful business model for others to follow. It was a fully-developed working commercial product with an established following, whose owners decided to give a paid GPL-release when the program was discontinued.
You're not paying attention. The topic is about what soldiers will prefer:
- "
- If I were a soldier that I would prefer a decorated war veteran as commander-in-chief"
ALL voters need a competent commander-in-chief to defend their national interest; active military are no different from anyone else in that regard. But servicemen may have a specific preference for another veteran, on the theory that he'll better understand and care for their needs (on and off the battlefield).Oh and incidentally, military coutesy dictates that members of any military service DO salute the Presiident of the United States.
No, it does not. Lincoln never saluted Grant. Roosevelt and Eisenhower never expected salutes. You do NOT salute your superior if he's out of uniform. And is the President issued a uniform...?
I pity the enlisted man or officer who's superior catches him
A custom invented by Ronald Regan, whose service in the Army's Hollywood division didn't teach him any better.
While this is "potentially" funny, it only really is if you actually believe something like the GPL isn't clear.
Gnu.org contains much more than just a copy of the GPL, and some of it quite unclear. Such as this, for example.
experience as the Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful armed forces
Technically, the President is not a military position. Officially, he's not even supposed to exchange salutes with servicemen. He is a CIVILIAN.
The way he lets Rumsfeld act like a General is insulting to the real military.
a war with two different sovereign nations.
Iraq and...? Help me out here. The USA never agreed that Afganistan was a sovereign nation.
over the NIPRnet or even better, the SIPRnet
And how many companies in Iraq have a SIPRnet connection? Even in US bases, it's hard for a Private to get on SIPRnet. That's for important, secret work, not puny little voting.
I doubt the banks would trust a technology that is easily fooled/spoofed.. no?
You are correct that personal finances are actually more important than votes, but voting operates under different constraints of mistrust.
(1) You, the voter, are not allowed to hold onto a reciept of how you voted. You must not be able to prove to other people that you voted for a specific candidate, because then votes would be sold on ebay.
(2) If your bank account is siphoned away, you notice it and complain to the police. If your vote is redirected from one candidate to another, you probably can't even detect the crime.
They have no problem with you charging whatever the market will bear, provided you provide the source code, at cost to transmit it, to anyone you give the binary to.
And if you do provide the source code, then somebody else will compile & distribute it, so that pretty soon the market won't bear any cost from you.
So although you can theoretically charge money for GPLed binaries, it'll never work anything like a conventional paid or shareware business model*. Look at the FSF's offer to sell you software. Clearly, that's hardly a sale at all- more just a thinly disguised charitable contribution.
* The only way shareware could work with GPLed software if the actual value comes not from the code, but from other copyrighted datafiles included with it, such as the graphics for a game.
the Democrats wouldn't have invaded Iraq?
John Kerry would have.
That link doesn't support your claim. It doesn't detract from it either- it's actually irrelevant.
It says nothing about what Gore or Kerry would've done if he was president. It DOES say that Kerry would've voted to give the president authority to use force against Iraq, but that's actually something else.
Elsewhere, Gore has explained that if he were president, he wouldn't have attacked Iraq. In fact he was giving major anti-war speeches back in 2002 (which were ignored by the media, except when they decided to call him an unkempt lunatic)
(And remember that in 1999, Gore said he'd be open to the idea of sending the US military to build democracy in other countries. Bush disagreed, and promised never to do that)
Coalition to fight in Iraq included more countries this time than in '91.
That's a total lie. If you hadn't said "to fight", it'd be arguably true, because there were a number of tiny countries that approved the US attack without joining in. But the number that actually fought there this time was much smaller.
At what point in time did Microsoft price it's OS so below the competitors as to drive them out of business?
Back when they HAD competitors, of course. Think back to OS/2 and BeOS. Or even further to GEM and DrDOS.
Carry a banner? Unlicensed advertising.
No such thing. Since when have you needed a license to advertise??
Cripes, people, learn the difference between the two. Copyrights and patents aren't the same thing with different terms of expiration.
Nothing you said even approximates a refutation to my claim. Algorithims are not copyrightable today. If they could be, it would be even worse than allowing them to be patented (like they are today).
. I think what the original poster meant was that specific algorithm code should be copyright protected,
If you decide that someone meant something different than what he actually wrote, then don't attack me for disagreeing with his real words.
were at one point for commercial sale.
Wrong. Golgotha and Wolfenstein-Enemy-Territory are on the list, and they were never for sale.
(However, both of those were planned for sale at some point)
Game data is not released under GPL. This is obvisly a mayor flaw, and will render the game unplayable.
Wrong. The game is still playable.
You can download a free demo to acquire "game data", and play that with the GPLed executable.
You can find a 3rd party who's made free "game data", and play with that.
You can even pay for the original game itself, and use that "game data" with the GPLed executables. Valid old copies of Doom/Quake go for $1.99 each.
GPLing is important for old software, because otherwise it'll tend to become unrunnable on future computers. But the game data has no such needs. If an artist were to hypothetically "upgrade it for newer machines", he may as well start over from scratch.
PS. Note that one of the games on this list, Golgotha, is backwards from your claim: they released only the game data, and no working code (because they had none).
Also, delivering the source code as mandated by the GPL would be a problem, where would you store it?
On an offer, valid for at least 3 years, to deliver the source code to any third party, on a medium customarily used for software exchange, for not more than the cost of shipping and handling.
Patent is far too broad to cover something like software algorithms
It would be ever worse of algorithms were copyrightable! Patents at least expire in 20 years, but copyright is forever (less one day).
Is just over two months from now immediate enough?
Are you implying that a Kerry presidency would treat patents any differently?
Sorry, no. The Rep and Dem parties haven't made any true difference on Intellectual Property law in their platforms. Bills like the Sonny Bono Act get bi-partisan support.
It's even possible that Democratic politicians would favor Eolas in this case, since the Clinton adminstration demonstrated itself to be anti-Microsoft (relative to the successive Republican leadership, that is). They might be inclined to "rescue a common-inventor from big business"
since 1 gigabyte in storage space costs, what, a handful of glass beads nowadays,
The benefit of GmailFS wouldn't be the space itself, but the fact that it's transparently portable- that you can access it from any (Linux) PC on the internet.
Note that if "broadband" ISPs had slightly less-restrictive terms of service, then this advantage would be irrelevant too, because you could easily place your own hard drive available for remote mounting.
That sounds a little illogical to me, because of the following counterexamples:
Quite irrelevant "examples". The keyword is "service". Gmail is a free SERVICE, while Linux is a free PROGRAM, and Windows is a non-free PROGRAM.
Once you acquire a program, it no longer has anything to do with the original author. How you use it doesn't negatively impact him, and he has no ability (or right) to "discontinue" your possession of the program. But Google continues to power the Gmail service, indefinately. They can terminate it anytime they want, so you must continually stay on their good side.