Or even leave it as.odf and do "right click->open with->BOMArchiveHelper" (okay, so that's what you'd do on a Mac -- I have no idea what the Windows zip decompresser is called).
and if you'd read more, you'd have seen in many cases, that letter went out beforeshipping, so how does that equate with your "validation"?
That's just stupid -- in that case, Amazon just shouldn't have shipped it!
You also neglect the fact that the terms and conditions of your Amazon purchase...
...end when the sale is completed.
...the same way they'd issue a refund on your card if they discovered "after you "validated" the transaction by receipt of goods" that you'd been overcharged.
Amazon does that because they want you to shop there again, not because they're legally obligated to do so.
First of all, as you said: hocking on Ebay will happen whether they're legitimately made available to the general public or not.
Second, that's exactly why people are advocating making the "general public" version a different color: so that the hocked version would be instantly distinguishable from it, in order to shame those who would buy off Ebay. Personally, I think it's a great idea and would work well.
Also, for the record, even though I'm a college student (and therefore don't have much money), I'd buy the legitimate version rather than a hocked one.
Like I said, "sort of." Instead of having separate pixel shaders and vertex shaders, the GeForce 8800 has 128 simple scalar floating-point processors that nVidia calls "stream processors".
And so what? If that were the legal requirement, then the only proper course of action would be to enforce it even if it did result in MySpace having to shut down. Lucky for us and MySpace, DOPA (or "son of DOPA") isn't law so it wasn't a requirement (and therefore wasn't enforced).
But the point is this: any kind of concern for "business models" is entirely irrelevant regardless, because it's the court's job to enforce the law, not give corporate handouts!
Although the judge's conclusion was correct, the reasoning he applied was flawed: it's not that MySpace shouldn't be liable because its business model depends on it, it's that MySpace shouldn't be liable because it's the parents' responsibility to care for their kids, and MySpace isn't anybody's parent.
There's NDAs and then there's NDAs. The kind of NDAs this effort is willing to abide by are the kind saying "don't tell anybody the details of the hardware you're writing the driver for until after it's released." The kind of NDAs that Broadcom wants, but which are incompatible with all Free Software (including this) are the ones that say "you can't release specs EVER, so you will always be dependent on us to tell you how the hardware works (even after we've long since abandoned it)."
The difference is that unix keeps everything in UTC, and uses simple zoneinfo files to transform UTC into local time. Daylight savings time is described in the zoneinfo file; therefore to fix the system when the definition of daylight savings time changes all you have to do is issue a new zoneinfo file.
In contrast, Windows keeps everything in local time and does not keep track of the daylight savings time rules separately. This means that Microsoft has to go patch the code that handles time itself, and that file timestamps will get screwed up by the change.
First of all, I think you don't understand the situation, which is this: Amazon does not have legal grounds to compel the customers to do anything whatsoever, because it had already followed through on its end of the transaction and thus validated it. That means that those customers have no obligation to return the product, and that if Amazon debits their credit cards without permission it is committing fraud. This is the legal fact of the matter, which has nothing whatsoever to do with morality. (In other words, your sarcastic "Your Honor" quote is irrelevant -- the customer owes nothing because he has a receipt (furnished by Amazon itself) saying so.)
Now, since Amazon can't compel the customers to do the "fair" thing, its only recourse is to convince them to do it voluntarily. The best way to do this would have been to ask nicely, as it would cause the customers to feel guilty about taking advantage. But instead, Amazon demanded retribution (and it did "demand" it -- according to the summary Amazon effectively said "give us the product or we will take whatever we think you owe" despite the fact that nothing is legally owed), which only allows the customers to rationalize their action more easily (e.g. customers read the letters and think "wow, Amazon is run by a bunch of jerks -- it serves them right to have lost that money!").
Currently the best solutions for TSP are based on parallel solutions, for which there is no shortage of hardware. Granted large parallel systems are not cheap (I'm not referring to little 4- and 8-way systems), but they do exist and are heavily used by researchers that require such technology.
I wonder how possible or useful it would be to try to solve TSP on a (128-way, sort of) GeForce 8800?
No, they're not! Corporations are run by people, corporations employ people, and corporations are owned by people, but corporations are not composed of people. Corporations are -- and explicitly designed to be -- legal entities in and of themselves, separate from the people associated with them. And this is entirely on purpose! If corporations were groups of people, those people would all share in the liability for the corporation's actions. Instead, however, people incorporate specifically to avoid that liability. Because of this, corporations cannot be considered as people -- individually or in groups. Moreover, if one were to judge the actions of a corporation in the same way he would judge the actions of a person, he would be forced to conclude that most corporations are the textbook definitions of "sociopaths!"
You saw the price on the page for the movie, you see the deal says 2 for 1, and you see a price of $0 shipping and handling... you think you MIGHT just notice something is wrong?
Of course nothing's wrong! What you described would be exactly equivalent to the checkout clerk in a brick-and-mortar store saying "congratulations, your order is free!" He's an agent of the company, so whatever he says is correct. Therefore, you count yourself lucky and leave with your great deal. Maybe you think the company is stupid for presenting such a great offer, but that's no reason to believe it isn't legitimate.
The problem I have with you wrote is that a piece of computer software really cannot be considered a agent of the company in itself, which seems to be implied.
Of course it can!
Let's make an analogy: I'm studying to be a civil engineer. Imagine that I used a structural analysis computer program to design a structure, and the program had a bug that ultimately resulted in the structure collapsing and killing 50,000 people. Am I off the hook with the excuse "it wasn't my fault -- the computer program screwed up?" Fuck, no! I would still be held liable for the disaster in its entirety, because I should have double-checked my work.
Amazon, in exactly the same way, is entirely liable for mistakes its computer systems make. Sure, undercharging for a DVD isn't the same as killing people, but the only difference is the severity. Amazon should have double-checked the transaction (and as others have mentioned, specifically states in a disclaimer that it does do that, exactly for the purpose of fixing errors like this!). The fact that it failed to do so is its own damn fault!
No, but you can reasonably be expected to know that giving away two copies of a DVD box set for no charge is not the intended offer when you've just clicked through a page with "Buy one, get one free" written in big letters on it.
And so could Amazon.com! Yet it went though with the transaction anyway, making it obvious that "by one, get one free" was in fact not the actual offer, and "by two get two free" was.
I find it perfectly reasonable to make Amazon eat the mistake, but that doesn't make willfully taking advantage a nice thing to do.
I would agree with you, except for the fact that Amazon demanded that the customer return the product or threatened to charge the "correct" price anyway. At that point, Amazon has thrown "niceness" out the window, and the customers owe nothing -- legally or morally. If it had asked nicely rather than demanding, it would be different.
If you have loads of money, then hire somebody to put up a Windows or Mac box loaded with all sorts of commercial software...
Unless by "Mac" you're talking about System 7, I disagree completely. It seems to me that quite a lot of the so-called "educational software" advertised today completely sucks in comparison to what we had back circa 1990. Number Munchers, LOGO, Oregon Trail, Hypercard... maybe even Dino Park Tycoon... those were examples of good software for kids! If I were running a preschool I'd go dumpster-diving for that stuff rather than get something new, and it would have nothing to do with price.
Slashdot Mirror
Or even leave it as .odf and do "right click->open with->BOMArchiveHelper" (okay, so that's what you'd do on a Mac -- I have no idea what the Windows zip decompresser is called).
Well, that's a relief! I guess I'd better RTFA next time, eh?
That's just stupid -- in that case, Amazon just shouldn't have shipped it!
...end when the sale is completed.
Amazon does that because they want you to shop there again, not because they're legally obligated to do so.
So did a four-function calculator, a few decades ago.
First of all, as you said: hocking on Ebay will happen whether they're legitimately made available to the general public or not.
Second, that's exactly why people are advocating making the "general public" version a different color: so that the hocked version would be instantly distinguishable from it, in order to shame those who would buy off Ebay. Personally, I think it's a great idea and would work well.
Also, for the record, even though I'm a college student (and therefore don't have much money), I'd buy the legitimate version rather than a hocked one.
Like I said, "sort of." Instead of having separate pixel shaders and vertex shaders, the GeForce 8800 has 128 simple scalar floating-point processors that nVidia calls "stream processors".
And so what? If that were the legal requirement, then the only proper course of action would be to enforce it even if it did result in MySpace having to shut down. Lucky for us and MySpace, DOPA (or "son of DOPA") isn't law so it wasn't a requirement (and therefore wasn't enforced).
But the point is this: any kind of concern for "business models" is entirely irrelevant regardless, because it's the court's job to enforce the law, not give corporate handouts!
What part of "userland" do you not understand? TiVo almost certainly uses more GPL software than just a kernel, you know!
Although the judge's conclusion was correct, the reasoning he applied was flawed: it's not that MySpace shouldn't be liable because its business model depends on it, it's that MySpace shouldn't be liable because it's the parents' responsibility to care for their kids, and MySpace isn't anybody's parent.
There's NDAs and then there's NDAs. The kind of NDAs this effort is willing to abide by are the kind saying "don't tell anybody the details of the hardware you're writing the driver for until after it's released." The kind of NDAs that Broadcom wants, but which are incompatible with all Free Software (including this) are the ones that say "you can't release specs EVER, so you will always be dependent on us to tell you how the hardware works (even after we've long since abandoned it)."
The difference is that unix keeps everything in UTC, and uses simple zoneinfo files to transform UTC into local time. Daylight savings time is described in the zoneinfo file; therefore to fix the system when the definition of daylight savings time changes all you have to do is issue a new zoneinfo file.
In contrast, Windows keeps everything in local time and does not keep track of the daylight savings time rules separately. This means that Microsoft has to go patch the code that handles time itself, and that file timestamps will get screwed up by the change.
First of all, I think you don't understand the situation, which is this: Amazon does not have legal grounds to compel the customers to do anything whatsoever, because it had already followed through on its end of the transaction and thus validated it. That means that those customers have no obligation to return the product, and that if Amazon debits their credit cards without permission it is committing fraud. This is the legal fact of the matter, which has nothing whatsoever to do with morality. (In other words, your sarcastic "Your Honor" quote is irrelevant -- the customer owes nothing because he has a receipt (furnished by Amazon itself) saying so.)
Now, since Amazon can't compel the customers to do the "fair" thing, its only recourse is to convince them to do it voluntarily. The best way to do this would have been to ask nicely, as it would cause the customers to feel guilty about taking advantage. But instead, Amazon demanded retribution (and it did "demand" it -- according to the summary Amazon effectively said "give us the product or we will take whatever we think you owe" despite the fact that nothing is legally owed), which only allows the customers to rationalize their action more easily (e.g. customers read the letters and think "wow, Amazon is run by a bunch of jerks -- it serves them right to have lost that money!").
Good, then you can vote out the asshole who keeps coming up with this stuff!
Yeah, but you'd need to run Slashdot on Marvin's AI in order to parse posts to find the references, and then it'd just mod them -6 instead anyway...
I wonder how possible or useful it would be to try to solve TSP on a (128-way, sort of) GeForce 8800?
No, they're not! Corporations are run by people, corporations employ people, and corporations are owned by people, but corporations are not composed of people. Corporations are -- and explicitly designed to be -- legal entities in and of themselves, separate from the people associated with them. And this is entirely on purpose! If corporations were groups of people, those people would all share in the liability for the corporation's actions. Instead, however, people incorporate specifically to avoid that liability. Because of this, corporations cannot be considered as people -- individually or in groups. Moreover, if one were to judge the actions of a corporation in the same way he would judge the actions of a person, he would be forced to conclude that most corporations are the textbook definitions of "sociopaths!"
Of course nothing's wrong! What you described would be exactly equivalent to the checkout clerk in a brick-and-mortar store saying "congratulations, your order is free!" He's an agent of the company, so whatever he says is correct. Therefore, you count yourself lucky and leave with your great deal. Maybe you think the company is stupid for presenting such a great offer, but that's no reason to believe it isn't legitimate.
And you should have called up Visa (or whoever) and disputed the charge. Otherwise, you allowed the hotel defraud you.
Of course it can!
Let's make an analogy: I'm studying to be a civil engineer. Imagine that I used a structural analysis computer program to design a structure, and the program had a bug that ultimately resulted in the structure collapsing and killing 50,000 people. Am I off the hook with the excuse "it wasn't my fault -- the computer program screwed up?" Fuck, no! I would still be held liable for the disaster in its entirety, because I should have double-checked my work.
Amazon, in exactly the same way, is entirely liable for mistakes its computer systems make. Sure, undercharging for a DVD isn't the same as killing people, but the only difference is the severity. Amazon should have double-checked the transaction (and as others have mentioned, specifically states in a disclaimer that it does do that, exactly for the purpose of fixing errors like this!). The fact that it failed to do so is its own damn fault!
And so could Amazon.com! Yet it went though with the transaction anyway, making it obvious that "by one, get one free" was in fact not the actual offer, and "by two get two free" was.
I would agree with you, except for the fact that Amazon demanded that the customer return the product or threatened to charge the "correct" price anyway. At that point, Amazon has thrown "niceness" out the window, and the customers owe nothing -- legally or morally. If it had asked nicely rather than demanding, it would be different.
Not true! The Constitution says that copyright law should only be applied "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts."
Maybe you ought to start reading the thing before you start spouting off about it -- you'll look like less of a dumbass that way.
Until the source code leaked, that is.
Wrong. For Microsoft "to apply exactly the same reasoning" would mean making Windows Public Domain, not making Linux proprietary.
Unless by "Mac" you're talking about System 7, I disagree completely. It seems to me that quite a lot of the so-called "educational software" advertised today completely sucks in comparison to what we had back circa 1990. Number Munchers, LOGO, Oregon Trail, Hypercard... maybe even Dino Park Tycoon... those were examples of good software for kids! If I were running a preschool I'd go dumpster-diving for that stuff rather than get something new, and it would have nothing to do with price.