The whole concept of somebody paying a website owner on the basis that visitors to the website might have seen an advert {but probably are not going to do anything about it, and almost certainly not buy the product} is just broken on too many levels to be sustainable.
As people get more and more savvy, so they are going to be less inclined to put up with adverts intruding into their internet experience. In a magazine, you can turn the page; on the TV you can change the station or leave the room. We are already used to that. {In future years scientists will no doubt postulate that, just as human stomach fluid became less acidic when we started cooking our food, so the average urine capacity of the human bladder decreased when every TV programme contained advertisements every half-hour}.
The problem with the old "Virtual Reality" stuff was that it was, frankly, a bit crap. The resolution of the displays was so limited, a single pixel represented several centimetres in space. Depth rendering was never really accurate, and refresh rates were poor.
Maybe all these problems have been overcome now, but the truth is that the last time anyone checked, Virtual Reality was all hype and no substance. The only thing keeping it going was it being just out of the reach of the common person. If it had ever been within their reach, they would have been mightily disappointed.
It's actually called "In the Beginning was the Command Line" and you can find it here [zip file].
Microsoft have managed to subvert most of the usual processes of ensuring fairness, because their "product" was something so new, and without any analogies elsewhere, that there just were no rules that could be used as a starting point.
To make pattern parts for a car, you buy the "official" part and go over it thoroughly with measuring instruments. Your parts have to match certain critical dimensions {such as the positions and threads of fixing holes, and possibly electrical current / voltage and hydraulic flow / pressure ratings} but may also do some things differently to the original parts. Point is, nothing seeks to stop you making them.
Now, suppose one car manufacturer decided that they would print a handbook containing certain important facts and figures about their cars, sell this at an extortionate price to manufacturers of pattern parts, and allow pattern parts only to be made according to the figures in the book and not by measuring original parts, and only by manufacturers who bought the book at full price from the car manufacturer. Obviously, this would restrict manufacturers to parts that they could manufacture using the specifications given in the book; if the book neglected to mention the maximum current likely to be drawn by the horn then this would preclude the manufacture of pattern horn relays. Additionally, incorrect data in the book might well lead to the manufacture of parts which could not actually be fitted to a vehicle.
Fortunately, this sort of thing would not be allowed in real life: once a car has been sold to a consumer, Exhaustion of Rights kicks in, and then the only thing standing between you and fitting all the aftermarket pattern parts you want is the annual roadworthiness test.
Unfortunately, when computers appeared on the scene, everyone was so blinded by science that they panicked, and common sense went out of the window. There isn't really an analogy in the non-computerised world for an operating system. For copyright purposes, computer software was classed as a work of literature. Now, this may not have been the right thing to do. Works of literature are not particularly modifiable and don't usually create other things; there isn't an obvious aftermarket. Computer programs can be modified to change their behaviour, and many computer programs create data files. This is evidence of two potential aftermarkets: one in modifying software that people have already purchased to alter or enhance its functionality, and another in supplying software to analyse and manipulate the data files created by other software.
Microsoft {and, it must be said, others; though nowadays Microsoft have eliminated or absorbed most of their competitors} have made unreasonable restrictions upon the legitimate use of their software. These include seeking to deny users the right to adapt software to their requirements, thus imposing their idea of a way of working on users {an act of violence}; and blocking the development of software which would work in various with data files created by Microsoft software, by deliberately withholding necessary details {also an act of violence}.
The owner of a car has the right to fit a new stereo, extra lights or upgraded braking systems supplied by parties other than the original manufacturer. The owner of a piece of software should have the right to change aspects of the way it works, or use other software supplied by a third party to interact with data files generated by the original software. Microsoft are guilty of interfering with those rights.
I own a Daewoo DVD+RW recorder, with internals by Philips..... not quite a straight rebranding job, but as near as damn it is to swearing. One of its many cool features is that you can insert your own chapter markers at random points, either while recording or subsequently. If you are watching and recording at the same time, one keystroke on the remote gives you an extra chapter mark. Just put one at the and of each piss-break and when you come to play back the recording, press NEXT at the beginning of the adverts to skip straight to the end; or {a little more effort but maybe worth it if you are recording a whole series on one disc} put two markers fore and aft, and set the whole chapter of adverts to "skip". It is mentioned in the manual that this provides a way to skip commercial breaks in home recordings.
Now if there is some kind of signal embedded in the broadcast that indicates that adverts are being shown, that could just as easily be used for skipping advertisements as for enforcing them. What's the betting that the Philips lab boys will cook up a little firmware hack that gives you fully-automatic advert skipping, so you can record your programmes unpolluted?
Meanwhile, I urge TV licence payers all around the world to write to their MPs, and try to get "enforced advert viewing" banned.
And there are already laws against misusing the radio spectrum, which could be enforced against anyone who broke them.
Most keyboards have keys that can be used used to spell out naughty words..... by your logic, we'd have to get rid of a lot of our most commonly-used keys..... who wants to learn a new keyboard layout anyway?
The problem is that the difference between high-end graphics cards and low-end graphics cards is mostly in the software.
It's not economically feasible to make low, middle and high-end graphics chips. So nVidia and ATI make basically one kind of hardware which can be set to different modes by connecting the correct combination of pins to logic 0 [ground] or 1 [+5V]. Then they sell it at different prices, depending what drivers {which look for what mode is selected and protest loudly if the wrong one} come with it. Someone who knew what they were doing could turn a £50 graphics card into a £300 card, with a little soldering and a quick software tweek.
They don't want you to know this, of course, because then there would be no reason for anyone to buy the £300 cards. You probably could base an entire business on buying £50 graphics cards and selling them, modified to the standard of a £300 card, for £100 -- most of which is profit for you. In order to keep you from knowing what needs to be done, nVidia and ATI have withheld the source code of their drivers. This is probably illegal in some jurisdictions, where ownership of an article makes the owner privy to any secret embodied therein; but the illegality is masked by the involvement of a computer.
By releasing Open Source drivers, ATI and nVidia would effectively be forced to admit that they have been shafting their customers all along..... which might just provoke a backlash. So, I don't think they're likely to do it without a little persuasion from outside.
Linux was never meant to have binary-only anything. API and ABI changes are to some extent deliberate; nowadays they aren't done for their own sake but neither are they shied away from just because the change would break compatibility with older, pre-compiled binaries. The idea always was -- and still is -- that since everything involved should be Open Source anyway, it is not such a big deal to recompile anything affected by the change. It's up to application authors to provide configure scripts and makefiles that detect dependencies and build sanely; and up to GNU/Linux distributors to provide homogeneous binary-compatible environments.
Your situation, and everyone else's, would be better served by compulsory source code disclosure.
I have a Better Idea: get a law passed that would make it illegal for a hardware manufacturer to conceal device specifications from the rightful owner of a device. In other words, compulsory Open Source Drivers as a precondition before a product may be sold. Or maybe, enforce existing laws which state that one is automatically privy to any secret embodied in an article which one rightfully owns; and that the necessary details required to make full use of a piece of technical equipment are not proprietary secrets, but form a part of the operating instructions for the instrument. That basically means that all the information that a competent programmer would require to write a driver for a particular piece of hardware should be readily available from its manufacturer, but I would go one step further and demand that the manufacturer release the full, annotated source code of any driver software they supply. This obviously means that hardware specifications are not any kind of protected "intellectual property".
At the same time this law is passed, declare a limited IP amnesty. Any IP necessarily given away in the course of complying with the law enters the Public Domain, and no repercussions will be allowed if it is subsequently found to have been misused while information was withheld from the public. That should pre-empt a flood of lawsuits {it's conceivable that the same thing was invented twice in parallel but neither inventor knew about the other due to excessive secrecy; there would be no way to prove "who was first" and the US patent system is rather broken in this regard anyway, so an amnesty is the fairest way to settle this}.
Companies might complain at first; but when their right to sell products is at stake, then they will listen. And in the end, it is us, the consumers, who made and can break their fortunes. Anyway, nVidia will benefit as much from ATI being forced to open up their drivers as ATI will benefit from nVidia opening up their drivers: precious little, since each company is already reverse-engineering their competitors' products.
It is not morally wrong for an adult without obligations to smoke cannabis in private, although it's illegal. And it is not illegal to throw food away, though while people are starving it's morally very wrong.
You are allowed {or at least were, until recently, but I am not aware of any change in the law regarding this} to drive unaccompanied to a driving test, or home from the test if you failed. If you didn't have to go out of your way to get to the garage and post office, you could stop off on the way to get the MOT and tax. The driving test examiner, for their own part, is entitled to check your vehicle and documents to make sure that the vehicle is in fit and proper condition and correctly taxed and insured. If they do not believe that the vehicle is suitable, they can refuse to go on with the test and fail you on the spot with no refund.
Most people just take the test in their driving instructor's car. Urban folklore suggests that one is more likely to pass in a driving school car than in one's own car.
Obviously the documents you produce at the police station have to have actually been valid {or not necessary; as in, the purpose of your journey was directly related to obtaining the relevant documents in the first place and you were not travelling any further than strictly necessary} at the time when you were stopped. An MOT issued a few hours later in the immediate vicinity would tend to suggest that the purpose of the trip was indeed to obtain an MOT certificate, which the tax disc would corroborate.
Still, if you did actually try this, you would most probably send the officer's smart-arse detector off the scale. Annoying the police is never a good idea, and especially not if you are actually in the right. You might get taken down to the nick for "processing" and be forced to miss your driving test. Again, no refund, though you could sue the police to get back the cost of the test. If you had a death-wish or something.
Wouldn't the fact of not being allowed to give up your statutory rights just because a contract asked you to, be enough to make part of the contract void, requiring a severability clause to prevent the rest becoming void? But I agree with you, there may be some other factor which voids a part of the agreement, something which I didn't make clear.
I think in some jurisdictions contracts may be automatically severable anyway, but this is arse-covering for the rest of the world.
My bad. The combination of Anonymous Coward and a question which would have been answered by following links within the article, led me to infer incorrectly that you were trolling. For this I apologise.
To avoid potential misunderstandings which may arise from others misinterpreting your intentions in future, may I respectfully suggest that you consider logging in before posting bona fide questions?
It's quite legal to give alcohol to a minor, if you are in loco parentis and not on licenced premises..... though if the recipient is under five years old, it has to be part of a prescribed or prepacked medicine. Likewise, it is entirely legal to drive a car without a driving licence, as long as you are not actually on the Queen's Highway and not breaking any other law. You can even legally drive a car with no tax disc, MOT {roadworthiness test}, and only a provisional licence and no accompanying driver..... as long as you intend to attend an MOT test, get a tax disc with the MOT certificate, and take a driving test in the now taxed-and-ticketed car, all on the same day. Besides which, if stopped, you always have seven days' grace in which to produce your documents at a police station.
So if the license says you can't transfer it, you can still transfer it?
Yes, because the Law of the Land says you may transfer a licence -- and rights given to you by the Law of the Land cannot be denied to you by entering into a contract. That's what the magic words "Your statutory rights are not affected" mean. It's also the reason why EULAs have a severability clause; that's the bit that says if any provision is found not to be applicable it shall not prejudice any other provision.
Does that mean that if it says you can't install the software multiply that you may indeed install it as many times as you want?
No, because the Law of the Land does not say you may install it as many times as you want. Though, you might argue in court that this constituted Fair Dealing {a deliberately ambiguous term: it is for the courts to decide what does or does not constitute fair dealing}. If you were successful, you would set a precedent.
Does it mean that licenses are completely worthless to the licensor?
Presumably when the buyers get the software, they have to phone in to get an activation number. Can't Microsoft just refuse?
If you bothered to read the article, you would see that, so far, they are only dealing with bulk licences -- not individual ones. No activation number involved. This makes sense on two levels; one, there'd be nothing to stop a company that was going out of business from passing on a bulk licence through some unofficial channel anyway, so it might as well be officialised; and two, companies are more likely to be in a position to defend themselves if it goes T.U. {although, don't forget, this is happening in the UK; loser pays all costs and no cash changes hands until a verdict is delivered}.
Second question. When you buy a used computer already loaded with software, what are your rights?
If the software was correctly licenced {discounting any licence terms which invoke the severability clause by contradicting the Law of the Land} then your rights are the same as any other licenced user. If the software was not correctly licenced, although you bought it in good faith, then your rights are limited to your statutory rights of fair dealing under copyright law {i.e. you may make copies only as deemed necessary to the task of using the software for its Rightful Purpose}. If the software was not correctly licenced and you had reason to believe that this was the case, then you may be an accessary to copyright infringement.
In the UK at least, once you sell something -- even something nebulous like a licence to do something the Law of the Land already gives you the right to do -- then it is no longer your property and you lose control of it.
They can put a clause in the licence that apparently forbids transfer of licences; but UK law gives you the right to transfer licences. And a promise not to exercise a statutory right is worthless, so invoking the "severability" clause found in almost every EULA. If there is no severability clause, then the whole EULA is null and void.
On one hand this is good because it reaffirms such doctrines as "fair dealing" and "exhaustion of rights", which are statutory rights that cannot legally be abridged by contract. On the other hand it is bad because it perpetuates the myth of dependency on Microsoft {though I suppose I shouldn't complain about that without actually trying to do something positive, like build and try to sell a sexy little all-in-one business server based on i-tal software}.
Disclic aren't doing anything illegal, nor are they doing anything wrong {an important distinction in the UK, where many things that are not wrong are technically illegal, and many things that are wrong are not illegal}. I'm sure Microsoft would like to have a pop at them; but I don't know of anything that they could actually make stick. And if they do try, it will almost certainly call into question the legal enforcibility of EULAs in the UK.
Because there is no way to be sure if a piece of software is "genuine" or not. That's a limitation of mathematics, not a limitation of human ingenuity. There is nothing that anyone could invent that would make it possible to tell the difference. There is no way to tell a pirate copy from a legitimate copy, for the exact same reason that one plus one is always two.
If the software is performing tests, a hacker can always intercept those tests and substitute the expected results.
Kubuntu rocks bells. It does everything a n00b could possibly want. It's based off Debian, which does everything a control freak geek could possibly want, their way.
Microsoft are one notch shy of being exposed for what they really are. They're squirming.
That is exactly what Microsoft are afraid of. That is why they still retain backward compatibility with all the 16-bit, insecure by design stuff. If you can't bring your legacy software with you, you may look elsewhere; and if you look elsewhere, you may like what you find
If you are running a pirated Microsoft product, there is a chance, no matter how tiny, that you could somehow be persuaded to buy a genuine Microsoft product. If you are running a competing product {either Mac OS X which is better, or GNU/Linux which is cheaper} then Microsoft have lost you for all time.
And the biggest cause of problematic hardware drivers is the closed-source nature of Windows.
At least Linux driver authors have access to the kernel source. Even those nasty binary-only abominations are developed with access to the kernel source; so there's at least a chance they'll be stable-ish when used with a kernel similar enough to what the driver author was using.
Even drivers developed entirely by third parties using the "French café" technique benefit from the fact that many people can understand and improve them. I seem to remember that deficiencies in hardware have been revealed through the creation of Linux drivers, but that might have been something else -- apologies if so.
Well, we know what Microsoft think about piracy. They don't mind home users pirating Microsoft software and not making money off it. What they object to is businesses running on pirated software, organised counterfeiting, and home users pirating non-Microsoft software and not making money off it.
This has had the effect of putting Microsoft's competitors out of business. Say you sell a closed-source office suite, which we'll call Cheap Office because my imagination is failing me, for £50 as opposed to £500 for MS Office. Now, someone wanting an office suite has four options:
Buy MS office
Buy Cheap Office and save £450
Pirate Cheap Office and save £50
Pirate MS Office and save £500
Most people are going to go for option 4. If Microsoft were actually to chase up people who pirate their software, then perhaps people would be persuaded to go for option 1..... or, more realistically, 2.
If we're going to be brutally honest, pirating Cheap Office doesn't really hurt you, the manufacturer, anymore than doing without it altogether..... or, in other words, doing without Cheap Office altogether {which is what those who pirate MS office are doing} doesn't hurt you any less than pirating it. If they couldn't pirate MS Office, that certainly does not mean they would all start buying MS Office: most of them would buy Cheap Office.
Microsoft know that. They know that home users with pirated copies of MS Office are receiving free MS Office training, perpetuating the brand and keeping the apparent monopoly going. They also know that by swallowing piracy, they can snuff out the competition. A small software company can go out of business because people are pirating your competitors' software.....
Gotta call BS on that one. No engine that relies on thermal expansion and contraction to produce movement can ever be more than 50% efficient. That is a limitation of the Laws of Physics, and won't be overcome by invention. You can try to capture more of the heat and KE remaining in the exhaust, but you'll never get it all: the second law of thermodynamics is against you. The Victorians were building steam engines where the exhaust from one cylinder powered another cylinder and sometimes even a third, but this cannot be continued indefinitely: diminishing returns set in because the cylinders need to get bigger as the pressure decreases, increasing the friction between piston and cylinder. A double expansion engine gives a slight efficiency boost, a triple expansion engine more so, but a quadruple expansion engine is barely better than a triple.
OTOH, if you actually want heat, you can get apparently higher efficiency at turning fuel into something else besides heat. Suppose you have a generating plant that burns some fuel and gets 25% of the energy stored in the fuel to come out as electricity. That means 75% of the energy stored in the fuel is coming out as heat. Now, big buildings such as office blocks and factories need heating..... they also need electricity, and perhaps compressed air. The engine can run a compressor directly, cutting some inefficiency.
Now suppose that instead of installing an ordinary boiler that will turn fuel into heat, you install a generator set with a water-cooled engine that will turn the same fuel into heat and electricity. You put in 4 units of fuel and get out 3 units of heat {which you needed anyway, to keep the factory warm; workers go on strike if it's too cold, and machinery seizes up when the grease solidifies} plus 1 unit of electricity. A simple boiler would have needed only 3 units of fuel to get the same 3 units of heat; but that extra one unit of fuel is not wasted. You have just turned it into one whole unit of electricity! Since this is a factory, the electricity can be used on site.
Even if this arrangement does not provide the factory's entire electrical or compressed air requirements {and it almost certainly won't}, you will still get a whole unit of electricity for the price of just one unit of heating fuel.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up!
The whole concept of somebody paying a website owner on the basis that visitors to the website might have seen an advert {but probably are not going to do anything about it, and almost certainly not buy the product} is just broken on too many levels to be sustainable.
As people get more and more savvy, so they are going to be less inclined to put up with adverts intruding into their internet experience. In a magazine, you can turn the page; on the TV you can change the station or leave the room. We are already used to that. {In future years scientists will no doubt postulate that, just as human stomach fluid became less acidic when we started cooking our food, so the average urine capacity of the human bladder decreased when every TV programme contained advertisements every half-hour}.
The problem with the old "Virtual Reality" stuff was that it was, frankly, a bit crap. The resolution of the displays was so limited, a single pixel represented several centimetres in space. Depth rendering was never really accurate, and refresh rates were poor.
Maybe all these problems have been overcome now, but the truth is that the last time anyone checked, Virtual Reality was all hype and no substance. The only thing keeping it going was it being just out of the reach of the common person. If it had ever been within their reach, they would have been mightily disappointed.
It's actually called "In the Beginning was the Command Line" and you can find it here [zip file].
Microsoft have managed to subvert most of the usual processes of ensuring fairness, because their "product" was something so new, and without any analogies elsewhere, that there just were no rules that could be used as a starting point.
To make pattern parts for a car, you buy the "official" part and go over it thoroughly with measuring instruments. Your parts have to match certain critical dimensions {such as the positions and threads of fixing holes, and possibly electrical current / voltage and hydraulic flow / pressure ratings} but may also do some things differently to the original parts. Point is, nothing seeks to stop you making them.
Now, suppose one car manufacturer decided that they would print a handbook containing certain important facts and figures about their cars, sell this at an extortionate price to manufacturers of pattern parts, and allow pattern parts only to be made according to the figures in the book and not by measuring original parts, and only by manufacturers who bought the book at full price from the car manufacturer. Obviously, this would restrict manufacturers to parts that they could manufacture using the specifications given in the book; if the book neglected to mention the maximum current likely to be drawn by the horn then this would preclude the manufacture of pattern horn relays. Additionally, incorrect data in the book might well lead to the manufacture of parts which could not actually be fitted to a vehicle.
Fortunately, this sort of thing would not be allowed in real life: once a car has been sold to a consumer, Exhaustion of Rights kicks in, and then the only thing standing between you and fitting all the aftermarket pattern parts you want is the annual roadworthiness test.
Unfortunately, when computers appeared on the scene, everyone was so blinded by science that they panicked, and common sense went out of the window. There isn't really an analogy in the non-computerised world for an operating system. For copyright purposes, computer software was classed as a work of literature. Now, this may not have been the right thing to do. Works of literature are not particularly modifiable and don't usually create other things; there isn't an obvious aftermarket. Computer programs can be modified to change their behaviour, and many computer programs create data files. This is evidence of two potential aftermarkets: one in modifying software that people have already purchased to alter or enhance its functionality, and another in supplying software to analyse and manipulate the data files created by other software.
Microsoft {and, it must be said, others; though nowadays Microsoft have eliminated or absorbed most of their competitors} have made unreasonable restrictions upon the legitimate use of their software. These include seeking to deny users the right to adapt software to their requirements, thus imposing their idea of a way of working on users {an act of violence}; and blocking the development of software which would work in various with data files created by Microsoft software, by deliberately withholding necessary details {also an act of violence}.
The owner of a car has the right to fit a new stereo, extra lights or upgraded braking systems supplied by parties other than the original manufacturer. The owner of a piece of software should have the right to change aspects of the way it works, or use other software supplied by a third party to interact with data files generated by the original software. Microsoft are guilty of interfering with those rights.
I own a Daewoo DVD+RW recorder, with internals by Philips ..... not quite a straight rebranding job, but as near as damn it is to swearing. One of its many cool features is that you can insert your own chapter markers at random points, either while recording or subsequently. If you are watching and recording at the same time, one keystroke on the remote gives you an extra chapter mark. Just put one at the and of each piss-break and when you come to play back the recording, press NEXT at the beginning of the adverts to skip straight to the end; or {a little more effort but maybe worth it if you are recording a whole series on one disc} put two markers fore and aft, and set the whole chapter of adverts to "skip". It is mentioned in the manual that this provides a way to skip commercial breaks in home recordings.
Now if there is some kind of signal embedded in the broadcast that indicates that adverts are being shown, that could just as easily be used for skipping advertisements as for enforcing them. What's the betting that the Philips lab boys will cook up a little firmware hack that gives you fully-automatic advert skipping, so you can record your programmes unpolluted?
Meanwhile, I urge TV licence payers all around the world to write to their MPs, and try to get "enforced advert viewing" banned.
And there are already laws against misusing the radio spectrum, which could be enforced against anyone who broke them.
..... by your logic, we'd have to get rid of a lot of our most commonly-used keys ..... who wants to learn a new keyboard layout anyway?
Most keyboards have keys that can be used used to spell out naughty words
The problem is that the difference between high-end graphics cards and low-end graphics cards is mostly in the software.
..... which might just provoke a backlash. So, I don't think they're likely to do it without a little persuasion from outside.
It's not economically feasible to make low, middle and high-end graphics chips. So nVidia and ATI make basically one kind of hardware which can be set to different modes by connecting the correct combination of pins to logic 0 [ground] or 1 [+5V]. Then they sell it at different prices, depending what drivers {which look for what mode is selected and protest loudly if the wrong one} come with it. Someone who knew what they were doing could turn a £50 graphics card into a £300 card, with a little soldering and a quick software tweek.
They don't want you to know this, of course, because then there would be no reason for anyone to buy the £300 cards. You probably could base an entire business on buying £50 graphics cards and selling them, modified to the standard of a £300 card, for £100 -- most of which is profit for you. In order to keep you from knowing what needs to be done, nVidia and ATI have withheld the source code of their drivers. This is probably illegal in some jurisdictions, where ownership of an article makes the owner privy to any secret embodied therein; but the illegality is masked by the involvement of a computer.
By releasing Open Source drivers, ATI and nVidia would effectively be forced to admit that they have been shafting their customers all along
Think of a NIC as one-dimensional. We've already got Open Source, two-dimensional framebuffer drivers. Three-dimensional is possible.
Linux was never meant to have binary-only anything. API and ABI changes are to some extent deliberate; nowadays they aren't done for their own sake but neither are they shied away from just because the change would break compatibility with older, pre-compiled binaries. The idea always was -- and still is -- that since everything involved should be Open Source anyway, it is not such a big deal to recompile anything affected by the change. It's up to application authors to provide configure scripts and makefiles that detect dependencies and build sanely; and up to GNU/Linux distributors to provide homogeneous binary-compatible environments.
Your situation, and everyone else's, would be better served by compulsory source code disclosure.
I have a Better Idea: get a law passed that would make it illegal for a hardware manufacturer to conceal device specifications from the rightful owner of a device. In other words, compulsory Open Source Drivers as a precondition before a product may be sold. Or maybe, enforce existing laws which state that one is automatically privy to any secret embodied in an article which one rightfully owns; and that the necessary details required to make full use of a piece of technical equipment are not proprietary secrets, but form a part of the operating instructions for the instrument. That basically means that all the information that a competent programmer would require to write a driver for a particular piece of hardware should be readily available from its manufacturer, but I would go one step further and demand that the manufacturer release the full, annotated source code of any driver software they supply. This obviously means that hardware specifications are not any kind of protected "intellectual property".
At the same time this law is passed, declare a limited IP amnesty. Any IP necessarily given away in the course of complying with the law enters the Public Domain, and no repercussions will be allowed if it is subsequently found to have been misused while information was withheld from the public. That should pre-empt a flood of lawsuits {it's conceivable that the same thing was invented twice in parallel but neither inventor knew about the other due to excessive secrecy; there would be no way to prove "who was first" and the US patent system is rather broken in this regard anyway, so an amnesty is the fairest way to settle this}.
Companies might complain at first; but when their right to sell products is at stake, then they will listen. And in the end, it is us, the consumers, who made and can break their fortunes. Anyway, nVidia will benefit as much from ATI being forced to open up their drivers as ATI will benefit from nVidia opening up their drivers: precious little, since each company is already reverse-engineering their competitors' products.
It is not morally wrong for an adult without obligations to smoke cannabis in private, although it's illegal. And it is not illegal to throw food away, though while people are starving it's morally very wrong.
You are allowed {or at least were, until recently, but I am not aware of any change in the law regarding this} to drive unaccompanied to a driving test, or home from the test if you failed. If you didn't have to go out of your way to get to the garage and post office, you could stop off on the way to get the MOT and tax. The driving test examiner, for their own part, is entitled to check your vehicle and documents to make sure that the vehicle is in fit and proper condition and correctly taxed and insured. If they do not believe that the vehicle is suitable, they can refuse to go on with the test and fail you on the spot with no refund.
Most people just take the test in their driving instructor's car. Urban folklore suggests that one is more likely to pass in a driving school car than in one's own car.
Obviously the documents you produce at the police station have to have actually been valid {or not necessary; as in, the purpose of your journey was directly related to obtaining the relevant documents in the first place and you were not travelling any further than strictly necessary} at the time when you were stopped. An MOT issued a few hours later in the immediate vicinity would tend to suggest that the purpose of the trip was indeed to obtain an MOT certificate, which the tax disc would corroborate.
Still, if you did actually try this, you would most probably send the officer's smart-arse detector off the scale. Annoying the police is never a good idea, and especially not if you are actually in the right. You might get taken down to the nick for "processing" and be forced to miss your driving test. Again, no refund, though you could sue the police to get back the cost of the test. If you had a death-wish or something.
Wouldn't the fact of not being allowed to give up your statutory rights just because a contract asked you to, be enough to make part of the contract void, requiring a severability clause to prevent the rest becoming void? But I agree with you, there may be some other factor which voids a part of the agreement, something which I didn't make clear.
I think in some jurisdictions contracts may be automatically severable anyway, but this is arse-covering for the rest of the world.
My bad. The combination of Anonymous Coward and a question which would have been answered by following links within the article, led me to infer incorrectly that you were trolling. For this I apologise.
To avoid potential misunderstandings which may arise from others misinterpreting your intentions in future, may I respectfully suggest that you consider logging in before posting bona fide questions?
It's quite legal to give alcohol to a minor, if you are in loco parentis and not on licenced premises ..... though if the recipient is under five years old, it has to be part of a prescribed or prepacked medicine. Likewise, it is entirely legal to drive a car without a driving licence, as long as you are not actually on the Queen's Highway and not breaking any other law. You can even legally drive a car with no tax disc, MOT {roadworthiness test}, and only a provisional licence and no accompanying driver ..... as long as you intend to attend an MOT test, get a tax disc with the MOT certificate, and take a driving test in the now taxed-and-ticketed car, all on the same day. Besides which, if stopped, you always have seven days' grace in which to produce your documents at a police station.
Three words: "Exhaustion of Rights".
In the UK at least, once you sell something -- even something nebulous like a licence to do something the Law of the Land already gives you the right to do -- then it is no longer your property and you lose control of it.
They can put a clause in the licence that apparently forbids transfer of licences; but UK law gives you the right to transfer licences. And a promise not to exercise a statutory right is worthless, so invoking the "severability" clause found in almost every EULA. If there is no severability clause, then the whole EULA is null and void.
On one hand this is good because it reaffirms such doctrines as "fair dealing" and "exhaustion of rights", which are statutory rights that cannot legally be abridged by contract. On the other hand it is bad because it perpetuates the myth of dependency on Microsoft {though I suppose I shouldn't complain about that without actually trying to do something positive, like build and try to sell a sexy little all-in-one business server based on i-tal software}.
Disclic aren't doing anything illegal, nor are they doing anything wrong {an important distinction in the UK, where many things that are not wrong are technically illegal, and many things that are wrong are not illegal}. I'm sure Microsoft would like to have a pop at them; but I don't know of anything that they could actually make stick. And if they do try, it will almost certainly call into question the legal enforcibility of EULAs in the UK.
Because there is no way to be sure if a piece of software is "genuine" or not. That's a limitation of mathematics, not a limitation of human ingenuity. There is nothing that anyone could invent that would make it possible to tell the difference. There is no way to tell a pirate copy from a legitimate copy, for the exact same reason that one plus one is always two.
If the software is performing tests, a hacker can always intercept those tests and substitute the expected results.
Yes. GNU/Linux is far too close for comfort.
Kubuntu rocks bells. It does everything a n00b could possibly want. It's based off Debian, which does everything a control freak geek could possibly want, their way.
Microsoft are one notch shy of being exposed for what they really are. They're squirming.
That is exactly what Microsoft are afraid of. That is why they still retain backward compatibility with all the 16-bit, insecure by design stuff. If you can't bring your legacy software with you, you may look elsewhere; and if you look elsewhere, you may like what you find
If you are running a pirated Microsoft product, there is a chance, no matter how tiny, that you could somehow be persuaded to buy a genuine Microsoft product. If you are running a competing product {either Mac OS X which is better, or GNU/Linux which is cheaper} then Microsoft have lost you for all time.
And the biggest cause of problematic hardware drivers is the closed-source nature of Windows.
At least Linux driver authors have access to the kernel source. Even those nasty binary-only abominations are developed with access to the kernel source; so there's at least a chance they'll be stable-ish when used with a kernel similar enough to what the driver author was using.
Even drivers developed entirely by third parties using the "French café" technique benefit from the fact that many people can understand and improve them. I seem to remember that deficiencies in hardware have been revealed through the creation of Linux drivers, but that might have been something else -- apologies if so.
This has had the effect of putting Microsoft's competitors out of business. Say you sell a closed-source office suite, which we'll call Cheap Office because my imagination is failing me, for £50 as opposed to £500 for MS Office. Now, someone wanting an office suite has four options:
- Buy MS office
- Buy Cheap Office and save £450
- Pirate Cheap Office and save £50
- Pirate MS Office and save £500
Most people are going to go for option 4. If Microsoft were actually to chase up people who pirate their software, then perhaps people would be persuaded to go for option 1If we're going to be brutally honest, pirating Cheap Office doesn't really hurt you, the manufacturer, anymore than doing without it altogether
Microsoft know that. They know that home users with pirated copies of MS Office are receiving free MS Office training, perpetuating the brand and keeping the apparent monopoly going. They also know that by swallowing piracy, they can snuff out the competition. A small software company can go out of business because people are pirating your competitors' software
Gotta call BS on that one. No engine that relies on thermal expansion and contraction to produce movement can ever be more than 50% efficient. That is a limitation of the Laws of Physics, and won't be overcome by invention. You can try to capture more of the heat and KE remaining in the exhaust, but you'll never get it all: the second law of thermodynamics is against you. The Victorians were building steam engines where the exhaust from one cylinder powered another cylinder and sometimes even a third, but this cannot be continued indefinitely: diminishing returns set in because the cylinders need to get bigger as the pressure decreases, increasing the friction between piston and cylinder. A double expansion engine gives a slight efficiency boost, a triple expansion engine more so, but a quadruple expansion engine is barely better than a triple.
..... they also need electricity, and perhaps compressed air. The engine can run a compressor directly, cutting some inefficiency.
OTOH, if you actually want heat, you can get apparently higher efficiency at turning fuel into something else besides heat. Suppose you have a generating plant that burns some fuel and gets 25% of the energy stored in the fuel to come out as electricity. That means 75% of the energy stored in the fuel is coming out as heat. Now, big buildings such as office blocks and factories need heating
Now suppose that instead of installing an ordinary boiler that will turn fuel into heat, you install a generator set with a water-cooled engine that will turn the same fuel into heat and electricity. You put in 4 units of fuel and get out 3 units of heat {which you needed anyway, to keep the factory warm; workers go on strike if it's too cold, and machinery seizes up when the grease solidifies} plus 1 unit of electricity. A simple boiler would have needed only 3 units of fuel to get the same 3 units of heat; but that extra one unit of fuel is not wasted. You have just turned it into one whole unit of electricity! Since this is a factory, the electricity can be used on site.
Even if this arrangement does not provide the factory's entire electrical or compressed air requirements {and it almost certainly won't}, you will still get a whole unit of electricity for the price of just one unit of heating fuel.
It's a device in which chemical potential energy is converted to electrical energy. Doesn't that make it, by definition, a battery?