As soon as I make a copy and sell it, I'm in violation of copyright law.
But, I *CAN* sell the bought copy.
This was a red herring.
Re:If you replace enough files...
on
OSx86 Cracked Again
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You don't "own" Mac OS X. Apple is granting you a license to use it under a legal framework in various jurisdictions, including one that is at least marginally clearly defined in the US. What you "own" is a ~5" circle-shaped piece of plastic and a cardboard box. If you have no respect for the license, fine; but then, why buy it at all? Why not just pirate it in the first place?
I don't own it? Really? I suppose I don't "own" a book either. Hint: I do. Just because Apple chooses to place certain things in a EULA doesn't make them law.
Now, there's certain things I cannot do with either, such as I can't replicate it for distribution or publicly display it. Those are copyright infringements. But, I can pretty much do anything else with it - make duplicates, tear them up, whatever.
That tearing up one is key, because I can assemble them later to recreate, or create a slight variation of the original. As long as it's for my personal use, I'm 100% legal. This is actually a supporting argument for those with the OSx86 project. Of course, they're probably in violation of some part of the DMCA, but that only applies in the USA.
Going back to the EULAs, judges have found some of the restriction clauses unenforceable, especially those that violate existing law. My personal favorite is the EULA clause I happened to read once that stated something along the lines of "may install only on 1 computer once". No exceptions for backups, mirrored disks that could be broken, whatever. "Once". Of course, all EULAs include the clause "if any part of this EULA is considered unenforcable, the remainder will remain.... blah blah blah" or something to that effect.
Is it any wonder people ignore EULAs when using them personally? The original intent of EULAs was to protect the providing company from litigation, near as I can recall. This is supported by the large number of EULAs that all included a list of suitable uses and things they weren't suited for. (e.g., Sun's Java clause about lack of suitability for life-support systems)
I'd say you've got less than half the problem identified then. The real problem the media execs have is that they're publishing mostly crap, and people aren't buying it. The dissappearing distribution channel monopoly just means they can't continue to overcharge at will.
Internet web use? Like everyone else says, not with the prices they're charging.
However, items that would be obvious to have on your phone: 1) iPod/MP3 player (why carry both if one will do?) 2) limited PDA (they're almost there now, just add a few additional capabilities, you'll have a full address book/calendaring capability. Add voice recording on the phone itself, and you have almost everything anyone needs. I'm neglecting that 1% of the most vocal population that wants hand-writing recognition capabilities)
Both of the above imply full interaction capabilities with PCs. If cell phones would have the brain-dead limitations removed (ie, locked phones) they'd be more useful to the consumer.
You're not the only one. I'd go so far as to say EJBs should be avoided at all costs for new development. Theoretically, they are supposed to make scalable development easy, but in reality, I've never seen this happen. A well designed java application, backed by DBs (or JMS/JTA for distributed transactions) have far out-performed EJBs on a given hardware platform, as you can do a much better job of bottleneck identification and resolution than you can with EJBs.
I'm currently working with a system that peaks with 35000+ concurrent users. Not an EJB in sight.
Here's the deal: I did read through the top 10 or 15 negative feedbacks. They all related to comments that indicated they were unaware it was "as-is" or used, and a couple of just wierd flamebait type comments (with 1000 plus buyers, I suppose you get a crackpot or two). For those negatives where the original link was still available, I checked the seller's response and verified the comments each time that indeed the item was as listed and that the buyer's complaint appeared unwarranted. The lots of 20 HD's were all sold within a very short time period, a matter of a few weeks. Shipping was 7-9 business days (2 boxes of 10 drives each are pretty heavy) So the first auctions were being received after the last of the auctions were already posted and active. The seller was pretty slick during this fraud period. He overlapped multiple auctions, with long auction times and shipping times, and sold a bunch of these things before people received anything. I was just thankful I didn't follow through, nor capitulate on the threat of negative feedback if I didn't pay my winning bid.
I guess in the end, I won, and I kept my $130 or so. 1 negative feedback was definitely worth the money.
Sounds suspiciously like that bill requiring registration and licensing of sellers, taken even further. Actually, Ebay could take their credit card and place a hold for the amount of the sale prior to allowing the sale go through, then release it after the buyer ok's it or 2 weeks. Yes, it makes it harder to sell, but it certainly would make it harder to commit fraud.
Actually, since there are so many ways of payment other than Ebay's system, the real way to fix this is for the seller to leave feedback before the buyer can leave feedback. IE - seller must rate the buyer for payment. Then buyer can rate the seller.
It doesn't make any sense that a buyer can rate a seller prior to the seller rating the buyer, precisely because of the "blackmail" potential.
My question would be how would you know? If the GDI locks up, it's done, no BSOD, nothing. I've had several of those, especially early on. Another problem... the kernel would report a kernel error, but it would be in a GDI subsystem within the kernel.dll.... Again, you'd have no way of knowing.
Matter of fact, right now, on this XP machine, I have lost use of the Alt-Tab key combination. This happens after a few days to two weeks of runtime. The only solution I've found is to reboot. I also start having strange errors at some point after this happens, including program crashes, especially IE when I have to open it. Speaking of IE crashes, IE crashes almost every time I hit Test Director (ActiveX). Yep, that's some cutting edge technology!
Well, considering that they came with performance number listings, were sold in lots of 20s, from a seller with 10s of thousands of sales, for working computer eq, who all of a sudden was selling roughly 2800 HDs in lots of 20.....
What exactly would you expect? Oh, and a statement that most drives that they sold worked, something like 95% but there was always a chance that 1 or 2 wouldn't.... well, 1 or 2 out of 20 I could deal with, 1 or 2 working out of several hundred however, is a different animal entirely.
It's been years, so I can't recall exactly what the auction stated on the site, but everything above was included.
I believe it was 3.5x when it got moved. Not 100% sure though, it's been a long long time since I've seen a 3.5x or 4.x system. I think it was external in NT3.1, but I'm not even sure about that. Just that the graphics system on 3.1 was as slow as you'd ever seen.
So, does this mean that MS's stated goal of "deprecating" OpenGL in favor of DirectX is now irrelevant? If the graphics subsystem is outside the kernel, it can be replaced by another driver that does not make OpenGL play second fiddle to DirectX. Perhaps this is a good thing?
I had a fun time with an e-bay auction. I won an auction for a collection of hard drives. Nothing listed in the auction said anything more than "used hard drives". Turns out that earlier "winners" received IBM disposed HDs, meaning they were completely useless. A large group of people were defrauded over a period of months. All complaints to Ebay went unanswered. However, being geeks etc, this large group of people started corresponding, bringing together evidence of a systematic mail fraud in action. The parent corporation of this particular company was notified in a chance to make right before legal actions would be taken. (Seems mail fraud above a certain dollar amount gets the fed's attention, as it was across state lines:) So the parent shut down the fraudster, and made good on all purchases.
The bad part about this supposedly happy ending? The last 5-8 people were notified by this group in time to not pay. I was one of those. I got a "bad rating" from the fraudster, and this is still on my ebay account to this day.
Ebay not only does not respond to fraud, it does not care about its customers because it doesn't allow corrections of feedback (not that it really matters) under any circumstances. Well, I believe they do now, but guess what - feedback from closed accounts should be dropped. It's not.
The easy solution is to only use ebay for specific items, and make sure if the $ amount is high (more than $100-$200, get personal contact info and deal with the individual directly. CC's are also useful. Having a phone number really helps, as you can do some due diligence before completing your buy.
On the whole, this approach has worked for me post that one incident, and the people I've dealt with have been good people overall. Just remember, if it looks too good to be true, it is. Even on Ebay.
GW-Basic came with DOS 3.x. That's when MS finally abandonded Bill's feeble attempt at writing any software and bought the rights to GW-Basic. But yes, I do remember those days, and the third disk that came with my whopping 1MB RAM system, OnTrack's Disk Management and Driver, so that I could access the extra 8MB of storage on my 40MB HD.
Now if you really want to go back, go back to the Atari 800 w/ cassette drive, for which you had to read a 40 page instruction book on how connect and initiate programs from a tape. Or the TRS-80 w/ 1 floppy drive. Start up the system, yank the disk, put in program disk, run the command for that paticular program, yank the disk, replace system disk, run edit program, yank system disk, replace with disk holding file to edit.... BTW, Apple had a similar system out at the time of the TRS-80. The pre-PC days. What a time....
These were truly pain in the ass systems. When dual floppy systems came out, there was much rejoicing.
If you wish to connect a windows box as is to the network, merely shut down the server service. That takes care of most bad issues while killing any useful sharing services. I believe you'll also have to kill the Computer Browser service, and a few others to be truly safe. Shutting down the Server Service shuts down most open ports - no open ports, no vulnerabilities.
Then you go to mozilla.org, download Firefox, install, and you should be good to go browsing for other patches you might need.
On the other hand, I'd stick any machine behind a router which by default blocks all ports. That's much safer, after all, if you can't see the box, worms/zombies can't infect you.
On the one hand, I would agree with you, but I happen to work for a company that does buy something like this as a "service". We're not the only ones, by any stretch of the imagination, as there are at least 3 major vendors of mapping type services.
Re:Is Opera Google's doorway to beating Microsoft?
on
Google to Buy Opera?
·
· Score: 1
MS's mode of operation is, like you said, first to provide their products bundled with new systems. They make a nice profit off of that, although not nearly what they could make on the open market, at least not originally. Now, no one I know buys an "upgrade". It's cheaper to buy a system if you really need that upgrade.
Take a look at XP - it was a $100M ad campaign just for its launch. Vista is supposed to exceed that. And that's not counting the "free advertising" by every MS sycophant op-ed PC based magazine out there. (I recall just 2-3 years ago the likes of PC mag were even questioning MS's ability to deliver on Longhorn's promise, now that they're delivering about 15% of what they originally promised, you'd guess they were delivering 150% with Vista based on these same magazines. Guess ad dollars really do buy positive press.)
I doubt there's any word of mouth, other than bad. As in "I loaded X from MS, and my machine crashed/locked up/BSOD'd/RSOD'd(the new BSOD)/doesn't work right. Take the 360 for instance. Have you seen a positive review? I haven't. The most positive thing I saw was that the 360 might exceed your TV's capabilities. That's a ringing endorsement if I ever saw one.
On the last point, I agree, I don't think that I've ever seen anything like the Google phenomenom. Percentage wise, maybe only in the early days of USENET, when the community was in the low thousands, and the newsgroups were below 1K.
We don't outlaw alcohol, but we do restrict its sale and consumption. We also restrict the licensing for cars and revoke that licensing for drunk driving.
Neither of those actions (restriction and revocation) prevent nor even slow down those that commit drunk driving. What slows down repeat offenders of drunk driving violations is to throw them in jail. (You can't do anything to prevent the first incident. Education is about all you can do, and I think we just about go overboard on that one as it is. It's like perfume, a slight spray is enough, but some just bathe in it, and it really doesn't do any good and, in fact, may actually have the opposite effect.
Re:Is Opera Google's doorway to beating Microsoft?
on
Google to Buy Opera?
·
· Score: 1
Google most definitely is in MS's space, or rather, the space MS wishes they were in now. You see, MS cannot continue to grow the OS/Office revenue stream. They're going to be doing well just maintaining that revenue stream for the next couple of years. After all, who really needs to upgrade either? They can't pull an Office95 either, since there is too large a current user base out there to attempt to force an upgrade on them.
In 95, that wasn't true, as many people were upgrading computers as fast as new generations came out, so putting O95 on new machines during the gov upgrade cycle was a stroke of genius, since it wasn't backwards compatibile for new files, and anyone wanting to do biz with the gov had to upgrade. Instant lock-in. Those large percentage upgrade cycles no longer occur with the same frequency nor impact, and the user base is too large to force an upgrade upon.
So, now you have the "upstart" Google taking entire new segments of business away from MS's clutches, in part merely because they are Google. If Google puts out a product, it gets instant exposure to millions by word of mouth if it's good or interesting, which they've pretty much nailed each time. MS can only salivate at that kind of marketing capability.
Google Maps is probably one of the most interesting applications to date to come from them. If you don't know why or can't see the added value, then ability to map things is obviously not something you're interested in, and you certainly don't have a business need for mapping.
Slashdot Mirror
As soon as I make a copy and sell it, I'm in violation of copyright law.
But, I *CAN* sell the bought copy.
This was a red herring.
I don't own it? Really? I suppose I don't "own" a book either. Hint: I do. Just because Apple chooses to place certain things in a EULA doesn't make them law.
Now, there's certain things I cannot do with either, such as I can't replicate it for distribution or publicly display it. Those are copyright infringements. But, I can pretty much do anything else with it - make duplicates, tear them up, whatever.
That tearing up one is key, because I can assemble them later to recreate, or create a slight variation of the original. As long as it's for my personal use, I'm 100% legal. This is actually a supporting argument for those with the OSx86 project. Of course, they're probably in violation of some part of the DMCA, but that only applies in the USA.
Going back to the EULAs, judges have found some of the restriction clauses unenforceable, especially those that violate existing law. My personal favorite is the EULA clause I happened to read once that stated something along the lines of "may install only on 1 computer once". No exceptions for backups, mirrored disks that could be broken, whatever. "Once". Of course, all EULAs include the clause "if any part of this EULA is considered unenforcable, the remainder will remain.... blah blah blah" or something to that effect.
Is it any wonder people ignore EULAs when using them personally? The original intent of EULAs was to protect the providing company from litigation, near as I can recall. This is supported by the large number of EULAs that all included a list of suitable uses and things they weren't suited for. (e.g., Sun's Java clause about lack of suitability for life-support systems)
I'd say you've got less than half the problem identified then. The real problem the media execs have is that they're publishing mostly crap, and people aren't buying it. The dissappearing distribution channel monopoly just means they can't continue to overcharge at will.
may just make it clear to all that DRM isn't going to solve Hollywood's perceived problem, and perhaps they need to look at the "problem" again.
Internet web use? Like everyone else says, not with the prices they're charging.
However, items that would be obvious to have on your phone:
1) iPod/MP3 player (why carry both if one will do?)
2) limited PDA (they're almost there now, just add a few additional capabilities, you'll have a full address book/calendaring capability. Add voice recording on the phone itself, and you have almost everything anyone needs. I'm neglecting that 1% of the most vocal population that wants hand-writing recognition capabilities)
Both of the above imply full interaction capabilities with PCs. If cell phones would have the brain-dead limitations removed (ie, locked phones) they'd be more useful to the consumer.
You're not the only one. I'd go so far as to say EJBs should be avoided at all costs for new development. Theoretically, they are supposed to make scalable development easy, but in reality, I've never seen this happen. A well designed java application, backed by DBs (or JMS/JTA for distributed transactions) have far out-performed EJBs on a given hardware platform, as you can do a much better job of bottleneck identification and resolution than you can with EJBs.
I'm currently working with a system that peaks with 35000+ concurrent users. Not an EJB in sight.
That was esperanto which has its own website. Read it in esperanto if you really want to bend your mind.
Just tried Explorer and the entire process tree. Nope. Log off might work, but I just rebooted.
Here's the deal: I did read through the top 10 or 15 negative feedbacks. They all related to comments that indicated they were unaware it was "as-is" or used, and a couple of just wierd flamebait type comments (with 1000 plus buyers, I suppose you get a crackpot or two). For those negatives where the original link was still available, I checked the seller's response and verified the comments each time that indeed the item was as listed and that the buyer's complaint appeared unwarranted. The lots of 20 HD's were all sold within a very short time period, a matter of a few weeks. Shipping was 7-9 business days (2 boxes of 10 drives each are pretty heavy) So the first auctions were being received after the last of the auctions were already posted and active. The seller was pretty slick during this fraud period. He overlapped multiple auctions, with long auction times and shipping times, and sold a bunch of these things before people received anything. I was just thankful I didn't follow through, nor capitulate on the threat of negative feedback if I didn't pay my winning bid.
I guess in the end, I won, and I kept my $130 or so. 1 negative feedback was definitely worth the money.
Sounds suspiciously like that bill requiring registration and licensing of sellers, taken even further. Actually, Ebay could take their credit card and place a hold for the amount of the sale prior to allowing the sale go through, then release it after the buyer ok's it or 2 weeks. Yes, it makes it harder to sell, but it certainly would make it harder to commit fraud.
Actually, since there are so many ways of payment other than Ebay's system, the real way to fix this is for the seller to leave feedback before the buyer can leave feedback. IE - seller must rate the buyer for payment. Then buyer can rate the seller.
It doesn't make any sense that a buyer can rate a seller prior to the seller rating the buyer, precisely because of the "blackmail" potential.
My question would be how would you know? If the GDI locks up, it's done, no BSOD, nothing. I've had several of those, especially early on. Another problem... the kernel would report a kernel error, but it would be in a GDI subsystem within the kernel.dll.... Again, you'd have no way of knowing.
Matter of fact, right now, on this XP machine, I have lost use of the Alt-Tab key combination. This happens after a few days to two weeks of runtime. The only solution I've found is to reboot. I also start having strange errors at some point after this happens, including program crashes, especially IE when I have to open it. Speaking of IE crashes, IE crashes almost every time I hit Test Director (ActiveX). Yep, that's some cutting edge technology!
This seller had a 97+% approval rating with thousands of feedback, and was listed as a power seller. They went bad.
George Washington University Basic I believe - the original DOS came with their copyright.
Well, considering that they came with performance number listings, were sold in lots of 20s, from a seller with 10s of thousands of sales, for working computer eq, who all of a sudden was selling roughly 2800 HDs in lots of 20.....
What exactly would you expect? Oh, and a statement that most drives that they sold worked, something like 95% but there was always a chance that 1 or 2 wouldn't.... well, 1 or 2 out of 20 I could deal with, 1 or 2 working out of several hundred however, is a different animal entirely.
It's been years, so I can't recall exactly what the auction stated on the site, but everything above was included.
I believe it was 3.5x when it got moved. Not 100% sure though, it's been a long long time since I've seen a 3.5x or 4.x system. I think it was external in NT3.1, but I'm not even sure about that. Just that the graphics system on 3.1 was as slow as you'd ever seen.
So, does this mean that MS's stated goal of "deprecating" OpenGL in favor of DirectX is now irrelevant? If the graphics subsystem is outside the kernel, it can be replaced by another driver that does not make OpenGL play second fiddle to DirectX. Perhaps this is a good thing?
I had a fun time with an e-bay auction. I won an auction for a collection of hard drives. Nothing listed in the auction said anything more than "used hard drives". Turns out that earlier "winners" received IBM disposed HDs, meaning they were completely useless. A large group of people were defrauded over a period of months. All complaints to Ebay went unanswered. However, being geeks etc, this large group of people started corresponding, bringing together evidence of a systematic mail fraud in action. The parent corporation of this particular company was notified in a chance to make right before legal actions would be taken. (Seems mail fraud above a certain dollar amount gets the fed's attention, as it was across state lines:) So the parent shut down the fraudster, and made good on all purchases.
The bad part about this supposedly happy ending? The last 5-8 people were notified by this group in time to not pay. I was one of those. I got a "bad rating" from the fraudster, and this is still on my ebay account to this day.
Ebay not only does not respond to fraud, it does not care about its customers because it doesn't allow corrections of feedback (not that it really matters) under any circumstances. Well, I believe they do now, but guess what - feedback from closed accounts should be dropped. It's not.
The easy solution is to only use ebay for specific items, and make sure if the $ amount is high (more than $100-$200, get personal contact info and deal with the individual directly. CC's are also useful. Having a phone number really helps, as you can do some due diligence before completing your buy.
On the whole, this approach has worked for me post that one incident, and the people I've dealt with have been good people overall. Just remember, if it looks too good to be true, it is. Even on Ebay.
GW-Basic came with DOS 3.x. That's when MS finally abandonded Bill's feeble attempt at writing any software and bought the rights to GW-Basic. But yes, I do remember those days, and the third disk that came with my whopping 1MB RAM system, OnTrack's Disk Management and Driver, so that I could access the extra 8MB of storage on my 40MB HD.
Now if you really want to go back, go back to the Atari 800 w/ cassette drive, for which you had to read a 40 page instruction book on how connect and initiate programs from a tape. Or the TRS-80 w/ 1 floppy drive. Start up the system, yank the disk, put in program disk, run the command for that paticular program, yank the disk, replace system disk, run edit program, yank system disk, replace with disk holding file to edit.... BTW, Apple had a similar system out at the time of the TRS-80. The pre-PC days. What a time....
These were truly pain in the ass systems. When dual floppy systems came out, there was much rejoicing.
If you wish to connect a windows box as is to the network, merely shut down the server service. That takes care of most bad issues while killing any useful sharing services. I believe you'll also have to kill the Computer Browser service, and a few others to be truly safe. Shutting down the Server Service shuts down most open ports - no open ports, no vulnerabilities.
Then you go to mozilla.org, download Firefox, install, and you should be good to go browsing for other patches you might need.
On the other hand, I'd stick any machine behind a router which by default blocks all ports. That's much safer, after all, if you can't see the box, worms/zombies can't infect you.
On the one hand, I would agree with you, but I happen to work for a company that does buy something like this as a "service". We're not the only ones, by any stretch of the imagination, as there are at least 3 major vendors of mapping type services.
MS's mode of operation is, like you said, first to provide their products bundled with new systems. They make a nice profit off of that, although not nearly what they could make on the open market, at least not originally. Now, no one I know buys an "upgrade". It's cheaper to buy a system if you really need that upgrade.
Take a look at XP - it was a $100M ad campaign just for its launch. Vista is supposed to exceed that. And that's not counting the "free advertising" by every MS sycophant op-ed PC based magazine out there. (I recall just 2-3 years ago the likes of PC mag were even questioning MS's ability to deliver on Longhorn's promise, now that they're delivering about 15% of what they originally promised, you'd guess they were delivering 150% with Vista based on these same magazines. Guess ad dollars really do buy positive press.)
I doubt there's any word of mouth, other than bad. As in "I loaded X from MS, and my machine crashed/locked up/BSOD'd/RSOD'd(the new BSOD)/doesn't work right. Take the 360 for instance. Have you seen a positive review? I haven't. The most positive thing I saw was that the 360 might exceed your TV's capabilities. That's a ringing endorsement if I ever saw one.
On the last point, I agree, I don't think that I've ever seen anything like the Google phenomenom. Percentage wise, maybe only in the early days of USENET, when the community was in the low thousands, and the newsgroups were below 1K.
Neither of those actions (restriction and revocation) prevent nor even slow down those that commit drunk driving. What slows down repeat offenders of drunk driving violations is to throw them in jail. (You can't do anything to prevent the first incident. Education is about all you can do, and I think we just about go overboard on that one as it is. It's like perfume, a slight spray is enough, but some just bathe in it, and it really doesn't do any good and, in fact, may actually have the opposite effect.
In 95, that wasn't true, as many people were upgrading computers as fast as new generations came out, so putting O95 on new machines during the gov upgrade cycle was a stroke of genius, since it wasn't backwards compatibile for new files, and anyone wanting to do biz with the gov had to upgrade. Instant lock-in. Those large percentage upgrade cycles no longer occur with the same frequency nor impact, and the user base is too large to force an upgrade upon.
So, now you have the "upstart" Google taking entire new segments of business away from MS's clutches, in part merely because they are Google. If Google puts out a product, it gets instant exposure to millions by word of mouth if it's good or interesting, which they've pretty much nailed each time. MS can only salivate at that kind of marketing capability.
Google Maps is probably one of the most interesting applications to date to come from them. If you don't know why or can't see the added value, then ability to map things is obviously not something you're interested in, and you certainly don't have a business need for mapping.