I'm sorry, but this is exactly the sort of bullshit monopoly laws exist to prevent: a company with an excessive amount of market share abusing its position in an attempt to exclude its competitiors.
If the above is actually your position and not a post with the intent of making fun of the Billy's Bitches Club, you have to realize that posting something of that kind of rediculous petulance only serves to make your entire argument seem... well, pathetic.
If it is sarcasm making fun of the MS Fanclub, you should either find a way to be more direct, or at the very least, keep your day job.
I dunno. It's like, if a company wants a commercial to have an effect, it should be made fun. There are commercials I actually pause and rewind my DVR for.
Microsoft moves into system security (with their firewall, spyware tool, and I think they recently bought an AV company), and then sets up a 'security' feature that just happens to block out their competitors?
I dunno. Representing Mac as some cool-but-arrogant college fuck and PC as a dowdy old businessman seems... offensive... to anyone who owns and has no trouble using their PC (this is actually a larger segment of the population than you'd think).
Exactly the point. WGA is useless, as new VLKs are being exposed constantly; MS can even change 'em up continuously, and they won't stop piraters.
Essentially, it's a big business trying desperately to fight the ingenuity of those with little cash, the ability to keep their risk low, and plenty to gain (respect in the 'scene' can be considered something of value here).
Still, the 'evidence of copies/distribution clause is not evidence of criminal infraction' bit is enough to relegate filesharing to the realm of civil law.
I'm pretty sure evidence of actual monied transactions are what are required for it to become a criminal issue.
"(a) Criminal Infringement. - Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either -
(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement."
Very nice. You're right; in the even I'm trying to sell infringing copies as real, the gov't will slam down on me. There's a good reason I don't bootleg.
Meanwhile, even though (2) seems like it's supposed to cover prepping for sale of bootlegs (making hundreds of copies in 6 months? What is being done with these copies?) and filesharing, the last sentence pretty much sums up this clause as difficult-to-enforce on filesharers.
Still, gotta give you that, in cases where the infringer is essentially committing fraud (selling copies as the Real Thing(tm)), yes he can be prosecuted.
That's not to say your everyday infringer (with several thousand tracks) is in danger of being arrested (subpoenaed, yes), but it's likely that the maker of the game in question might.
Still, I think probably that the copyright holder (whoever it's been sold to) needs to file a complaint before any of this can happen. IE: there is no crime if there is no victim, and you can't even claim society on this one.
"The number of people that pay when they can pirate is about 5%."
Fortunately for the software industry, the number of people with the knowledge and ability to pirate is kinda low. Most of your computer-using population doesn't want to bother with this torrenting thing and will instead go out and buy something from the software bargain bin.
Here's some logic for you: Assume first that Microsoft verifies pirated copies by their key, using a blacklist.
Now, realize that most pirate keys in the wild are from Volume Licenses (VLKs), as these are expected to have a very large number of users attached to them, and thus less likely to raise piracy flags.
Process: Microsoft finds that a key is in the wild, due to one employee out of an easy thousand releasing it. They blacklist it and notify the rightful owner that their key is changed. This leaves some users behind - those not available when the corp does their VLK update. Microsoft also fails to notify a percentage of these VLKs, as some may be anonymous purchases. These are your false positives.
Meanwhile, pirates are working day and night to get out their 0-day, slipstreamed, pre-keyed, custom WinXP discs into the torrent stream. They have keys that Microsoft doesn't know are wild and would have to download a 250M-4.7G image (depending on how much extra crap is in / how much has been stripped out of this version) just to gain access to the file contining the pre-key. Since 1) several of these come out per day, 2) many torrenters use tools like PeerGuardian to keep people like MS out of the loop, and 3) MS takes their sweet time with updates of any sort, MS has their work cut out for them, and are often behind the curve by several days or weeks. The users of these XP versions are your false negatives.
Overall, meanwhile, WGA is a bad idea; it's a practically infeasible solution to a problem it doesn't actually solve. It costs money, annoys valid users, and fails to protect against piracy - much like any DRM solution.
Eventually business sense will overcome the paranoia that brings us DRM, WGA and similar technologies. This awakening has already started in the music industry. It's just a matter of time before MS can convince its shareholders that the experiment isn't working.
Copyright infringement is not a crime. It's a civil infraction you can be sued for, but it's not even a misdemeanor as far as the government is concerned. Copyright infringement is not 'prosecuted' by the government at all, though the person/company the copyright has fallen to after a company folds (someone always buys out the IP) has the right to sue for infringement.
Seriously, man. Where do you get this shit? Been sucking at the teat of the RIAA for too long?
Meanwhile, take a look at the GP's sentence you quoted; he says 'a virtual machine', IE a simulated computer running on the computer for which the OEM license is for. Technically, that's not a breach of contract in any way; he's still running the OEM licensed copy of Win98 on the machine for which it's licensed. He's just doing it through an "I don't like badly-written OSes, but they're occasionally useful" wrapper.
Universities do (generally) use XP Professional, and (generally) they do use VLKs to handle installs/updates. Unfortunately, since they often pass these out to students, they're often the first to be pirated. Which means they're often the first to be blacklisted with this WGA shite.
Fortunately, for compters wired to the University intranet (that don't have remote management shut off), the University IT staff will dynamically update the VLK if theirs becomes blacklisted (Microsoft will notify the owner of a VLK before it becomes invalid and give instructions on performing a mass VLK update). The problem is that when an individual has to reinstall, the IT guys are usually willing to just give out the VLK rather than insisting that they do the reinstall themselves - thus restarting the cycle.
In short: take your laptop to your IT dept and tell 'em your computer thinks it's been pirated; they'll be able to fix it.
'cept that the dll subversion trick works miracles. Almost always 0-day fix, and can be implemented without a working windows system using a small, automated Linux LiveCD (the same one I use to ghost my system once in a while).
Given that ATI and nVidia's support for Linux is next to nil, and that their mystery blobs are somewhat error-prone, (not to mention the inherent issues in using a generic binary - link conflicts, non-optimized machine code, etc.), I don't see how choosing an Intel card would be rediculous.
Sure, they're behind, but the 965 series is better than, say, ATI's 8500 (the highest of their cards that is properly supported in Linux). Seems to me that Intel's just jumped ahead of the game by becoming available to a niche market.
Meanwhile, I don't exactly trust the business-motivated hacks found in blobs from graphics card vendors (re: the quake.exe debacle). Having source makes a bechmarking far more auditable.
There's variations on the idea, but they all have the same issue: You have to produce a magnetic field to transmit power wirelessly. The problem therein being that any magnetic media (like your credit card) in close proximity are quickly rendered useless.
Meanwhile, there are applications that wireless is completly useless for; for example, playback/recording equipment. If you're not getting low latency, you might as well be using your sound card.
I mean, aside from the fact that it's pronounced 'Gigawatt' like 'Gigibyte', not like 'Jigga what?'
Ok, yeah. Lightning is millions of volts. It's also passing through BILLIONS of ohms worth of atmosphere. Given that, my estimate of the actual power in a bolt of lightning is: V*A=P A=V/R P=V^2/R P=(10^6V)^2/10^9O = 10^3W
A kilowatt. Definately enough to kill any hardware hit by it (espeically since regardless of the power, it's still a PD of 10^6V), but smaller than that 1.21 GW by several orders of magnitude.
Slashdot Mirror
"You gotta serve somebody."
*blinks*
Yeah. I'll bet you enjoy slavery.
Sorry, but I serve two distinct groups:
My family, and society at large. In that order. The devil and the 'lord' can go take a flying leap.
Actually, I think most people would be able to detect it when it fails utterly to work, and instead performs a quick BSD.
huh?
I'm sorry, but this is exactly the sort of bullshit monopoly laws exist to prevent: a company with an excessive amount of market share abusing its position in an attempt to exclude its competitiors.
If the above is actually your position and not a post with the intent of making fun of the Billy's Bitches Club, you have to realize that posting something of that kind of rediculous petulance only serves to make your entire argument seem... well, pathetic.
If it is sarcasm making fun of the MS Fanclub, you should either find a way to be more direct, or at the very least, keep your day job.
I dunno. It's like, if a company wants a commercial to have an effect, it should be made fun. There are commercials I actually pause and rewind my DVR for.
Does anyone else smell a new monopoly suit?
Microsoft moves into system security (with their firewall, spyware tool, and I think they recently bought an AV company), and then sets up a 'security' feature that just happens to block out their competitors?
Yeah... that smells pungent to me.
I dunno. Representing Mac as some cool-but-arrogant college fuck and PC as a dowdy old businessman seems... offensive... to anyone who owns and has no trouble using their PC (this is actually a larger segment of the population than you'd think).
What's really funny is the mac users that pooh-pooh linux, yet use a KDE component in their daily websurfing.
Uh. Technically, only laymen bother classifying objects as 'planets'.
Well, laymen and astrologers. Care to know what having pluto in the third house means to you?
A VM is not an actual machine. In the legal sense, I'm pretty sure it counts as a program, since there's no extra actual hardware involved.
Note, however, that IANAL. I'd like to hear a valid legal opinion on the matter.
Exactly the point. WGA is useless, as new VLKs are being exposed constantly; MS can even change 'em up continuously, and they won't stop piraters.
Essentially, it's a big business trying desperately to fight the ingenuity of those with little cash, the ability to keep their risk low, and plenty to gain (respect in the 'scene' can be considered something of value here).
Still, the 'evidence of copies/distribution clause is not evidence of criminal infraction' bit is enough to relegate filesharing to the realm of civil law.
I'm pretty sure evidence of actual monied transactions are what are required for it to become a criminal issue.
"(a) Criminal Infringement. - Any person who infringes a copyright willfully either -
(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, United States Code. For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement."
Very nice. You're right; in the even I'm trying to sell infringing copies as real, the gov't will slam down on me. There's a good reason I don't bootleg.
Meanwhile, even though (2) seems like it's supposed to cover prepping for sale of bootlegs (making hundreds of copies in 6 months? What is being done with these copies?) and filesharing, the last sentence pretty much sums up this clause as difficult-to-enforce on filesharers.
Still, gotta give you that, in cases where the infringer is essentially committing fraud (selling copies as the Real Thing(tm)), yes he can be prosecuted.
That's not to say your everyday infringer (with several thousand tracks) is in danger of being arrested (subpoenaed, yes), but it's likely that the maker of the game in question might.
Still, I think probably that the copyright holder (whoever it's been sold to) needs to file a complaint before any of this can happen. IE: there is no crime if there is no victim, and you can't even claim society on this one.
"How about from the referenced article? The person testing WGA used a key that had been posted on a site for around 2 years. "
Sorry, I was assuming a reasonable implementation - one that wouldn't let 2-year in-the-wild keys stay feral.
'course, I'm expecting too much from Microsoft: a reasonable implementation of anything.
"The number of people that pay when they can pirate is about 5%."
Fortunately for the software industry, the number of people with the knowledge and ability to pirate is kinda low. Most of your computer-using population doesn't want to bother with this torrenting thing and will instead go out and buy something from the software bargain bin.
Funny thing is, nine times out of ten, a piece of software with an online activiation is a piece of software I can live without.
I mean, honestly, do I really *need* Trijinx for longer than it takes to beat it?
Here's some logic for you:
Assume first that Microsoft verifies pirated copies by their key, using a blacklist.
Now, realize that most pirate keys in the wild are from Volume Licenses (VLKs), as these are expected to have a very large number of users attached to them, and thus less likely to raise piracy flags.
Process:
Microsoft finds that a key is in the wild, due to one employee out of an easy thousand releasing it. They blacklist it and notify the rightful owner that their key is changed. This leaves some users behind - those not available when the corp does their VLK update. Microsoft also fails to notify a percentage of these VLKs, as some may be anonymous purchases. These are your false positives.
Meanwhile, pirates are working day and night to get out their 0-day, slipstreamed, pre-keyed, custom WinXP discs into the torrent stream. They have keys that Microsoft doesn't know are wild and would have to download a 250M-4.7G image (depending on how much extra crap is in / how much has been stripped out of this version) just to gain access to the file contining the pre-key. Since 1) several of these come out per day, 2) many torrenters use tools like PeerGuardian to keep people like MS out of the loop, and 3) MS takes their sweet time with updates of any sort, MS has their work cut out for them, and are often behind the curve by several days or weeks. The users of these XP versions are your false negatives.
Overall, meanwhile, WGA is a bad idea; it's a practically infeasible solution to a problem it doesn't actually solve. It costs money, annoys valid users, and fails to protect against piracy - much like any DRM solution.
Eventually business sense will overcome the paranoia that brings us DRM, WGA and similar technologies. This awakening has already started in the music industry. It's just a matter of time before MS can convince its shareholders that the experiment isn't working.
Copyright infringement is not a crime. It's a civil infraction you can be sued for, but it's not even a misdemeanor as far as the government is concerned. Copyright infringement is not 'prosecuted' by the government at all, though the person/company the copyright has fallen to after a company folds (someone always buys out the IP) has the right to sue for infringement.
Seriously, man. Where do you get this shit? Been sucking at the teat of the RIAA for too long?
That would imply that it's against the law.
s/illegal/a breach of contract/
Meanwhile, take a look at the GP's sentence you quoted; he says 'a virtual machine', IE a simulated computer running on the computer for which the OEM license is for. Technically, that's not a breach of contract in any way; he's still running the OEM licensed copy of Win98 on the machine for which it's licensed. He's just doing it through an "I don't like badly-written OSes, but they're occasionally useful" wrapper.
Well, yes and no.
Universities do (generally) use XP Professional, and (generally) they do use VLKs to handle installs/updates. Unfortunately, since they often pass these out to students, they're often the first to be pirated. Which means they're often the first to be blacklisted with this WGA shite.
Fortunately, for compters wired to the University intranet (that don't have remote management shut off), the University IT staff will dynamically update the VLK if theirs becomes blacklisted (Microsoft will notify the owner of a VLK before it becomes invalid and give instructions on performing a mass VLK update). The problem is that when an individual has to reinstall, the IT guys are usually willing to just give out the VLK rather than insisting that they do the reinstall themselves - thus restarting the cycle.
In short: take your laptop to your IT dept and tell 'em your computer thinks it's been pirated; they'll be able to fix it.
That is, if you give a shit.
Actually, in the world of 'suckit' and 'fucktard', my favorite is 'assknuckle'. Or, maybe 'scrotagonal'. Kind of a tossup.
Feel free to mod this offtopic.
'cept that the dll subversion trick works miracles. Almost always 0-day fix, and can be implemented without a working windows system using a small, automated Linux LiveCD (the same one I use to ghost my system once in a while).
Not for Linux users.
Given that ATI and nVidia's support for Linux is next to nil, and that their mystery blobs are somewhat error-prone, (not to mention the inherent issues in using a generic binary - link conflicts, non-optimized machine code, etc.), I don't see how choosing an Intel card would be rediculous.
Sure, they're behind, but the 965 series is better than, say, ATI's 8500 (the highest of their cards that is properly supported in Linux). Seems to me that Intel's just jumped ahead of the game by becoming available to a niche market.
Meanwhile, I don't exactly trust the business-motivated hacks found in blobs from graphics card vendors (re: the quake.exe debacle). Having source makes a bechmarking far more auditable.
There's variations on the idea, but they all have the same issue:
You have to produce a magnetic field to transmit power wirelessly. The problem therein being that any magnetic media (like your credit card) in close proximity are quickly rendered useless.
Meanwhile, there are applications that wireless is completly useless for; for example, playback/recording equipment. If you're not getting low latency, you might as well be using your sound card.
I always had an issue with that.
I mean, aside from the fact that it's pronounced 'Gigawatt' like 'Gigibyte', not like 'Jigga what?'
Ok, yeah. Lightning is millions of volts. It's also passing through BILLIONS of ohms worth of atmosphere. Given that, my estimate of the actual power in a bolt of lightning is:
V*A=P
A=V/R
P=V^2/R
P=(10^6V)^2/10^9O = 10^3W
A kilowatt. Definately enough to kill any hardware hit by it (espeically since regardless of the power, it's still a PD of 10^6V), but smaller than that 1.21 GW by several orders of magnitude.
Words of a non-programmer. Note taken.