Find a large speaker magnet somewhere, and leave your license on it overnight. The magnetic strip will become unreadable, and anyone wanting to scan it will have to just look at it instead.
It's a pre-emptive strike. Nvidia sees all of they whacked-out patents being issued on technologies that impact the PC market, and they are working to secure technologies that impact them directly or indirectly. They may not want to rape other companies for money. They just don't want to be raped.
A lot of companies claim this, but it's illogical. All you need to do is publish a description your technology in some print journal, and it becomes prior art for anyone trying to patent it.
The ban against adults acting like children or cgi-porn is not to protect the actor, but to discourage child porn. It wouldn't be too hard for a porn movie producer to find an 18-year-old girl who looks like she's 15, and market the movie as such. Once you allow fake child porn, it becomes much easier to allow real child porn. You could, for instance, make a movie with a 15-year-old and wait three years to release it. If anyone asks, you produce the 18-year-old actress and say, "We just made this movie".
Hmmm... I wonder if I should be concerned that I can figure out how to get around potential child porn law loopholes?
The bottom line is I forsee all kinds of ISPs getting warnings to block "legitimate" porn sites that advertise legal porn as less than legal - which I don't think is banned under any current law.
This is completely untrue. The GPL says you can redistribute the software, and you can also charge for it.
So what? It also says you can't stop anyone from re-distributing it for free. So maybe you can charge for it, but then your first customer can put the code on some ftp site and everyone will get the code from there instead. Granted, you no longer have to pay for the bandwith, but this is still a lousy business model.
but they should only really need support if our software is hard to use or poorly designed
Gawd, I wish every GPL advocate really understood the significance of this statement. If you give the software away and sell support, then the only way you make money is by getting enough people to pay for support. Logically, the more valuable the support is, the more likely people will pay for it. In other words, people will only pay for support if they need it. So what kind of support could a user want?
New features or other code modifications, like customizations specific to your company
Outsourcing of installation or deployment. That is, instead of installing the software on every computer in your company, you hire them to do it for you.
Help with using the product itself.
Let's evaluate the problems with these on a case-by-case basis:
Because the user has access to the source code, it's possible for him to make the modifications himself. In fact, the GPL encourages this. So chances are, he won't pay someone else to do it.
Only large corporations will be interested in this, and only if the corporation has an insufficient internal IT staff to do the job itself.
The end-user will only pay for help using the program if he can't figure it out himself. However, the easier the software is to use, the less help the user will need. That's what the term "ease-of-use" is all about. So the developer has an incentive to make the software hard to use, to improve the likelihood that the customer will pay for support. In other words, the pay-for-support-only model is completely contrary to making the software easy to use! The ramifications of this are astounding. It results in a business model that encourages making the product difficult to use, but not too difficult that people won't use it.
The kicker is that because the revenue model is so weak, the company will charge more for support than if it also sold the software.
Although I hate Microsoft as much as anyone else (I'm an OS/2 user, so I've been hating them longer than most Slashdot readers have), they have been trying to explain these issues to everyone. Of course, in typical Microsoftian style, all they end up doing is making themselves look stupid to anyone who isn't computer illiterate.
The people who choose the GPL for their software do so because they don't care about making money but they don't want anyone else to make money. The software is done on the programmer's free time as a hobby, and the GPL allows others to use his work without giving them to opportunity to make money from it.
A programmer who use the GPL see it as a tool for distributing code that he wants to write. The programmer knows that no one will be able to do more with the software than he can. Since he doesn't care about commercial concepts like support and ease-of-use, the GPL allows him to do only what he wants to do with the code, and doesn't give him any incentive to do more. How many times have you emailed a developer of a GPL'd program for some feature or help, and gotten a reply along the lines of, "You have the source code, you figure it out!"?
Frankly, I like the idea. Without the GPL, a lot of programmers who don't want to worry about support and end users constantly bugging them for new features would never have released their programs at all.
Psychologists probably have a name for it, but Mac users suffer from a long history of abuse. They immediately assume that whenever they talk to someone whom they think might not be a Mac-head, that they will need to be more forceful to get what the same respect as a PC user. The best thing you can do for your company, and your job, is to make sure none of your customers think that the only reason you have that job is because no one else will do it.
Part of the problem is that OS 9 users outnumber OS X users by a significant margin. Every day, the ratio changes slightly in favor of OS X, but it will be a long time before it hits 50/50.
Now, of the people who actually buy new software/hardware, the ratio of OS X to OS 9 users is higher. People who are still using a PowerMac 8600, which doesn't support OS X, probably aren't buying a whole lot of new hardware or software anyway.
Another "excuse" I've heard is that some vendors are waiting for Apple to include certain features in OS X before first. What would be the point of writing a multimedia driver if the multimedia subsystem in OS X is going to be rewritten in the next version (for example)? I think Creative is using this excuse for their Sound Blaster Live cards. It doesn't surprise me, Creative Labs has a history of lying about the capabilities of operating systems they don't want to support.
Well, that's stupid. What if his apps run natively in OS X? Is he supposed to launch classic mode, relaunch his app, and then print? And what if his apps don't run in classic mode? The latest version of MS Office is only for OS X.
I have an Epson 3000 which costs a whole lot more than his printer, and I also have no idea if, or when, Epson will release OS X drivers.
The only difference is that OS/2 is actually very much alive and kicking. New versions were recently released, IBM is still supporting it, and new software is being written for it. There's even a conference for it being planned this Fall - the same conference that has been going on for over five years.
OS/2 isn't making a comeback, because it's never gone away.
If the device is broken, they should replace it. If they waited until the device was no longer made, then they only have themselves to blame. It's not like the old technology suddenly disappeared off the marketplace! Despite the fact that very few people use them, 3.5" floppy drives can still be purchased. Anyone who has vital data on a floppy disk today will have no excuse when they finally stop making the drives.
Your mistake, which is something that apparently happens to a lot of people, is that when you discarded the hardware used to read your electronic data, you did not transfer that data to a new medium. You simply discarded the hardware and forgot about the data. There's nothing suprising about this. It would be like selling your house and forgetting to move your furniture out of it, and then moving into a new house and saying, "Damn! I forgot the furniture, and now the owners of my old house have it!".
Toronto blows away anything we have here in Texas, I can assure you. In fact, Toronto is probably the only city I'd consider visiting just to see what's there.
The problem with the SSSCA is that it effectively ignores the nature of computer technology. Implementing DRM in every digital component produced is ludicrous. It will prevent engineers from DEVELOPING technology. See this post for details.
We need to explain it to our politicians. Frankly, I don't know how.
I understand that, but one day our society will stagnate because no one is willing to put up with a disability, and then what do we do?
Humanity grows only by overcoming its limitations. If humans no longer have any limitations, then they will stop growing. Our history has been full of individuals making sacrifices for the greater good, even against their own wishes. I see this as being no different.
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Find a large speaker magnet somewhere, and leave your license on it overnight. The magnetic strip will become unreadable, and anyone wanting to scan it will have to just look at it instead.
A lot of companies claim this, but it's illogical. All you need to do is publish a description your technology in some print journal, and it becomes prior art for anyone trying to patent it.
Hmmm... I wonder if I should be concerned that I can figure out how to get around potential child porn law loopholes?
No, I believe it's illegal to have adult actors pretend to be children having sex.
Actually, I believe it is.
So what? It also says you can't stop anyone from re-distributing it for free. So maybe you can charge for it, but then your first customer can put the code on some ftp site and everyone will get the code from there instead. Granted, you no longer have to pay for the bandwith, but this is still a lousy business model.
In other words, everyone but the programmer. I think you just proved my point, thank you!
Gawd, I wish every GPL advocate really understood the significance of this statement. If you give the software away and sell support, then the only way you make money is by getting enough people to pay for support. Logically, the more valuable the support is, the more likely people will pay for it. In other words, people will only pay for support if they need it. So what kind of support could a user want?
- New features or other code modifications, like customizations specific to your company
- Outsourcing of installation or deployment. That is, instead of installing the software on every computer in your company, you hire them to do it for you.
- Help with using the product itself.
Let's evaluate the problems with these on a case-by-case basis:- Because the user has access to the source code, it's possible for him to make the modifications himself. In fact, the GPL encourages this. So chances are, he won't pay someone else to do it.
- Only large corporations will be interested in this, and only if the corporation has an insufficient internal IT staff to do the job itself.
- The end-user will only pay for help using the program if he can't figure it out himself. However, the easier the software is to use, the less help the user will need. That's what the term "ease-of-use" is all about. So the developer has an incentive to make the software hard to use, to improve the likelihood that the customer will pay for support. In other words, the pay-for-support-only model is completely contrary to making the software easy to use! The ramifications of this are astounding. It results in a business model that encourages making the product difficult to use, but not too difficult that people won't use it.
The kicker is that because the revenue model is so weak, the company will charge more for support than if it also sold the software.Although I hate Microsoft as much as anyone else (I'm an OS/2 user, so I've been hating them longer than most Slashdot readers have), they have been trying to explain these issues to everyone. Of course, in typical Microsoftian style, all they end up doing is making themselves look stupid to anyone who isn't computer illiterate.
A programmer who use the GPL see it as a tool for distributing code that he wants to write. The programmer knows that no one will be able to do more with the software than he can. Since he doesn't care about commercial concepts like support and ease-of-use, the GPL allows him to do only what he wants to do with the code, and doesn't give him any incentive to do more. How many times have you emailed a developer of a GPL'd program for some feature or help, and gotten a reply along the lines of, "You have the source code, you figure it out!"?
Frankly, I like the idea. Without the GPL, a lot of programmers who don't want to worry about support and end users constantly bugging them for new features would never have released their programs at all.
Thanks for the tip - that's a really cool feature! Now if only they had a way to convert PDF 5.0 documents to 3.0.
The Red Hat / gcc thing is old news. Just look at the date of that article on gnu.org.
A good BIOS can assign IRQs to slots.
You should be careful when you use the words "Microsoft" and "judge" in the same sentence.
Psychologists probably have a name for it, but Mac users suffer from a long history of abuse. They immediately assume that whenever they talk to someone whom they think might not be a Mac-head, that they will need to be more forceful to get what the same respect as a PC user. The best thing you can do for your company, and your job, is to make sure none of your customers think that the only reason you have that job is because no one else will do it.
Now, of the people who actually buy new software/hardware, the ratio of OS X to OS 9 users is higher. People who are still using a PowerMac 8600, which doesn't support OS X, probably aren't buying a whole lot of new hardware or software anyway.
Another "excuse" I've heard is that some vendors are waiting for Apple to include certain features in OS X before first. What would be the point of writing a multimedia driver if the multimedia subsystem in OS X is going to be rewritten in the next version (for example)? I think Creative is using this excuse for their Sound Blaster Live cards. It doesn't surprise me, Creative Labs has a history of lying about the capabilities of operating systems they don't want to support.
I have an Epson 3000 which costs a whole lot more than his printer, and I also have no idea if, or when, Epson will release OS X drivers.
I think it's a hack - but more of a "data hack" than a "code hack".
It will be enforced via economic sanctions (e.g. tariffs).
OS/2 isn't making a comeback, because it's never gone away.
If the device is broken, they should replace it. If they waited until the device was no longer made, then they only have themselves to blame. It's not like the old technology suddenly disappeared off the marketplace! Despite the fact that very few people use them, 3.5" floppy drives can still be purchased. Anyone who has vital data on a floppy disk today will have no excuse when they finally stop making the drives.
Your mistake, which is something that apparently happens to a lot of people, is that when you discarded the hardware used to read your electronic data, you did not transfer that data to a new medium. You simply discarded the hardware and forgot about the data. There's nothing suprising about this. It would be like selling your house and forgetting to move your furniture out of it, and then moving into a new house and saying, "Damn! I forgot the furniture, and now the owners of my old house have it!".
Man, I'd love to travel back in time five years and tell a bunch of Mac advocates that within five years, Emacs will come pre-loaded on a Mac.
Toronto blows away anything we have here in Texas, I can assure you. In fact, Toronto is probably the only city I'd consider visiting just to see what's there.
We need to explain it to our politicians. Frankly, I don't know how.
Humanity grows only by overcoming its limitations. If humans no longer have any limitations, then they will stop growing. Our history has been full of individuals making sacrifices for the greater good, even against their own wishes. I see this as being no different.