... a few megabytes of email more or less is a miniscule cost in terms of computer wear and tear, indeed, too small to measure...
while this is true, it should also be noted that there would a small loss in productivity of those employees receiving e-mail. in monetary terms, this can be quite costly.
i have to say, though, sueing someone over a small amount of mass-emailing seems excesive.
actually, it is possible that people do this. i work for a company that had a service deal with AOL and for training purposes, we had to get regular user accounts with the AOL service. seems kind of odd that they would contract us for work and not provide training accounts, but we just billed the cost back to them anyways.
now, that's not to say that the person in question is also in this situation, but just realize that it is a very real possibility.
No. HP's RISC CPU was the PA-RISC. I haven't really studied that architecture very much, so I can't really tell you much about it.
On the other hand...
The Alpha CPU was a 64-bit processor manufactured by DEC. As you probably already know, DEC was purchased by Compaq, which is now joining forces with HP. The single most talked about feature of the alpha was it's floating point performance. Though I can't produce the numbers myself, it supposedly beat any other hardware platform by quite a large margin in the floating point department (even at significantly lower clock speeds). The typical uses seemed to include scientific applications.
Also worthy of note: Alpha's can currently run many OS's. The "official" OS's include Tru64 Unix (previously OSF/1), Windows NT 4.0, and OpenVMS. You can also run FreeBSD (which is on my alpha), NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux.
Though I never ran it myself, Windows NT for alpha was supposed to be quite interesting. The actually code you ran was made for the x86 platform, but special software translated the x86 instructions to alpha instructions. The first time you ran a program, this process was very slow. However, the more you ran a program, the more the translator was able to optimize the translated code. Quite an interesting way to keep things portable.
if a minor presents himself as being at or over the age of 18 at the time of the signing of the contract, he can be held accountable for the details described within the contract and may not be able to disaffirm the contract.
this holds true in a few states anyways. not sure about the entire US or other countries.
i think your analogy may be a bit off. when i buy a blizzard game, i'm not buying a battle.net server with it. in fact, i'm really just buying a game that includes a battle.net client. what the bnetd team has done is emulate the server behavior, not the client. it would be different if a team had created a game that used blizzard game data files and looked the same, but wasn't done through blizzard.
also, i think it's important to note that the bnetd team did not copy the server software, they only copied the server-client protocol (or the main parts of it anyways). this is completely different than saying that they made a copy of the server. saying that they made a copy implies that they had the battle.net server source code and used parts of the actual source to complete the project.
i don't think that buying something under a set of conditions should always be legally enforced. take for instance the example of a shop owner selling hammers with the sole condition that you must murder someone with it before you can you use it to repair things around your house. so, if i buy the hammer, am i really obligated to kill someone (which, of course, is illegal)? i think not.
when it comes to software, i can see where companies can actually license the use of their programs and you do not actually own the program. you may own the media, but you don't own the code. however, when it comes to companies trying to enforce what you do *with* the software, i think that is a completely different story. i can buy a wrench and use it as a hammer-like tool. does that make it possible for the wrench manufacturer to sue me for misuse of the tool? no... it probably voids my warranty on the tool, but they have no legal recourse and i don't see why software companies do.
i must say that i agree with your comment fully. i've always said that baseball bats pose a threat to society since they can easily be turned into a weapon. same goes for thousands of commonly used items that can be found everywhere. however, you'll never see that happen...
i think the reason for this is because there is not a huge corporation that is lobbying for stricter laws with regards to violent crimes (and many others as well). oh sure, mp3's and CD-R's become readily available and it's an all out legal assault against every little distributor, manufacturer, or individual that tries to promote these products. but if you are a victim of rape or violent physical abuse, there is no corporate-funded legal team to fight for you.
oh... i don't know about that. the air is pretty important. i mean, the air provides you with life everyday... the moon just provides lighting at night (when it's not in the earth's shadow).
seriously though, i think you have a point here. it seems like all the statistics and figures that get thrown around don't take a look at the big picture. i mean, just looking at a section of the pie doesn't tell you whether the whole thing is good or not.
the one thing i'd like to know though, is if these trends we are seeing are meerly an effect of cyclical behavior of the the earth's atmosphere... or adverse reactions to the way mankind has used (or abused depending upon your opinion) the natural resources of our planet.
anyone have any interesting links to articles about this?
well, it depends on how the server client system is setup. in the case of Q3, it is very easy to do what i described. the server admin simply runs a fake Q3 auth daemon and the redirects the auth traffic accordingly. in the case of blizzard's games however, i'm not sure that it could be done. it's been awhile since i've played anything from them, but i remember everything regarding the servers being in blizzard's hands. in that case, you would not be able to bypass the auth system with what i described.
one note: this method assumes that the auth key will actually make it to the auth server. it is entirely possible for someone to write their own version of the auth server and then, through creative/etc/hosts entries, DNS entries, or whatever, have the game verify auth from a locally running server (that takes anything and simply says "VALID").
i don't know if you could really get away with this since blizzard's stuff is more centralized, but i think this is a problem that id has had to face.
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when i read your post, i immediately thought of a Jamie Zawinski article that i read a few weeks ago:
http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsum.html
he talks about this very thing. quite interesting if you ask me.
... a few megabytes of email more or less is a miniscule cost in terms of computer wear and tear, indeed, too small to measure ...
while this is true, it should also be noted that there would a small loss in productivity of those employees receiving e-mail. in monetary terms, this can be quite costly.
i have to say, though, sueing someone over a small amount of mass-emailing seems excesive.
actually, it is possible that people do this. i work for a company that had a service deal with AOL and for training purposes, we had to get regular user accounts with the AOL service. seems kind of odd that they would contract us for work and not provide training accounts, but we just billed the cost back to them anyways.
now, that's not to say that the person in question is also in this situation, but just realize that it is a very real possibility.
yes, the OS was, but you could run x86 apps on an alpha without having to find the proper port.
No. HP's RISC CPU was the PA-RISC. I haven't really studied that architecture very much, so I can't really tell you much about it.
On the other hand...
The Alpha CPU was a 64-bit processor manufactured by DEC. As you probably already know, DEC was purchased by Compaq, which is now joining forces with HP. The single most talked about feature of the alpha was it's floating point performance. Though I can't produce the numbers myself, it supposedly beat any other hardware platform by quite a large margin in the floating point department (even at significantly lower clock speeds). The typical uses seemed to include scientific applications.
Also worthy of note: Alpha's can currently run many OS's. The "official" OS's include Tru64 Unix (previously OSF/1), Windows NT 4.0, and OpenVMS. You can also run FreeBSD (which is on my alpha), NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux.
Though I never ran it myself, Windows NT for alpha was supposed to be quite interesting. The actually code you ran was made for the x86 platform, but special software translated the x86 instructions to alpha instructions. The first time you ran a program, this process was very slow. However, the more you ran a program, the more the translator was able to optimize the translated code. Quite an interesting way to keep things portable.
just a footnote here...
if a minor presents himself as being at or over the age of 18 at the time of the signing of the contract, he can be held accountable for the details described within the contract and may not be able to disaffirm the contract.
this holds true in a few states anyways. not sure about the entire US or other countries.
it's a joke... you know... ha, ha... funny, funny.
gafsoh (get a fucking sense of humor)
so when can i get a distributed.net client that makes use of this?
i think your analogy may be a bit off. when i buy a blizzard game, i'm not buying a battle.net server with it. in fact, i'm really just buying a game that includes a battle.net client. what the bnetd team has done is emulate the server behavior, not the client. it would be different if a team had created a game that used blizzard game data files and looked the same, but wasn't done through blizzard.
also, i think it's important to note that the bnetd team did not copy the server software, they only copied the server-client protocol (or the main parts of it anyways). this is completely different than saying that they made a copy of the server. saying that they made a copy implies that they had the battle.net server source code and used parts of the actual source to complete the project.
i don't think that buying something under a set of conditions should always be legally enforced. take for instance the example of a shop owner selling hammers with the sole condition that you must murder someone with it before you can you use it to repair things around your house. so, if i buy the hammer, am i really obligated to kill someone (which, of course, is illegal)? i think not.
when it comes to software, i can see where companies can actually license the use of their programs and you do not actually own the program. you may own the media, but you don't own the code. however, when it comes to companies trying to enforce what you do *with* the software, i think that is a completely different story. i can buy a wrench and use it as a hammer-like tool. does that make it possible for the wrench manufacturer to sue me for misuse of the tool? no... it probably voids my warranty on the tool, but they have no legal recourse and i don't see why software companies do.
i must say that i agree with your comment fully. i've always said that baseball bats pose a threat to society since they can easily be turned into a weapon. same goes for thousands of commonly used items that can be found everywhere. however, you'll never see that happen...
i think the reason for this is because there is not a huge corporation that is lobbying for stricter laws with regards to violent crimes (and many others as well). oh sure, mp3's and CD-R's become readily available and it's an all out legal assault against every little distributor, manufacturer, or individual that tries to promote these products. but if you are a victim of rape or violent physical abuse, there is no corporate-funded legal team to fight for you.
it seems unfair, but what are you to do about it?
oh... i don't know about that. the air is pretty important. i mean, the air provides you with life everyday... the moon just provides lighting at night (when it's not in the earth's shadow).
seriously though, i think you have a point here. it seems like all the statistics and figures that get thrown around don't take a look at the big picture. i mean, just looking at a section of the pie doesn't tell you whether the whole thing is good or not.
the one thing i'd like to know though, is if these trends we are seeing are meerly an effect of cyclical behavior of the the earth's atmosphere... or adverse reactions to the way mankind has used (or abused depending upon your opinion) the natural resources of our planet.
anyone have any interesting links to articles about this?
i thought the digital theaters used computer-based solutions... meaning: no film. of course, my crack usage has doubled in the past week...
well, it depends on how the server client system is setup. in the case of Q3, it is very easy to do what i described. the server admin simply runs a fake Q3 auth daemon and the redirects the auth traffic accordingly. in the case of blizzard's games however, i'm not sure that it could be done. it's been awhile since i've played anything from them, but i remember everything regarding the servers being in blizzard's hands. in that case, you would not be able to bypass the auth system with what i described.
one note: this method assumes that the auth key will actually make it to the auth server. it is entirely possible for someone to write their own version of the auth server and then, through creative /etc/hosts entries, DNS entries, or whatever, have the game verify auth from a locally running server (that takes anything and simply says "VALID").
i don't know if you could really get away with this since blizzard's stuff is more centralized, but i think this is a problem that id has had to face.