I worked for a pipe organ builder as a holiday job for a few months.
Um, all of them. That's part of the design of the organ - making sure that the blower is capable of supporting the largest possible chord the organist can play. If that means all stops, all couplers, no duplicated notes (e.g. middle C on manual 1 and middle C on manual 2), then for a massive organ you're going to get an equally massive blower. Even the largest organ has a limited amount of air to deal with, but that is always enough to support what the organ can theoretically pump out. Any organ builders that didn't equip their organs will large enough blowers would soon be found out and equally rapidly go out of business (unless it was specced out that way, which is unlikely - just about the first thing an organist does on the commissioning of a new organ is yank out all the stops and see if he can blow the church roof off and it would be immediately obvious if the builder had only done a half-arsed job).
Wow, just listened to that Ad Nos sample. Amazing. Just as you think it can't possibly get any bigger, it does exactly that. Several times. Stunning. That extra bit on the top of the last note - blimey.
...is the Suse 8.2 FTP installation. Ok, you want to install SuSe? Pick a network module.
WTF????? Windows has had network card autodetection for CENTURIES*. Why in 20MB it couldn't work it out for itself is beyond me; surely a few hundred bytes of extra code wouldn't hurt.
*It had it last century, and it has is this century. Ok, elapsed time is probably less than a decade, but it sounds more impressive this way.
Do builders have contracts that say "any DIY you do at home belongs to us", or "Sorry, you can't build shelves for your friends and charge them for it because that's a violation of our IP?"
Still, if you signed it then you signed it. Can't see how it could be considered reasonable though. So you benefitted from your knowledge while working there? Why is that such a problem? Can we have a reverse clause that says that if the stock goes up while I'm working there, that I now own the company?
> I thought/. was the source for fair and balanced coverage.
Ah, you must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot. Anything Microsoft do is automatically wrong here, even if it's right. If MS were to eat the RIAA for breakfast, that'd be wrong. If MS were to overturn software patents, that also would be wrong. Coverage here is fair and balanced if you're not Microsoft. Or SCO. Or *AA. Or....well, just about anyone really.
It's not even fair and balanced if it's Linux. Anything ESR, FSF or Linus do is automatically right, even if it's wrong. If Eric bombed Washington DC, that'd be ok. If Linus joined the Taliban, that'd be cool. Linux is always better than Windows and OSS is always better than CSS, even if they're actually crapper.
Also, such twaddle as "In Soviet Russia, MS Exchange configures YOU!", "1. (anything) 2. ??? 3. Profit!!" and "I, for one, welcome our new (subject of the day) overlords" is funny.
A short C program to randomise the identification codes in a spam, a web server, and a downloader such as WebReaper.
From a spam I take the URL, e.g. http://spammer.com/script.cgi?id=12345 and convert it to http://spammer.com/script.cgi?id=#####
the C program loops over this N times where N depends on how hacked off with spam I'm feeling, converting the # to random digits and adding the new URL to a.htm file. I publish the htm file on the WinXP webserver, then set WebReaper to download that page plus everything linked to it to a depth of 4 servers (the original page, the spammer, the friends of that spammer, and the friends of those twats). Oh, then I shift-Delete the lot, restart WebReaper, and repeat until bored.
Most of the time it just hits single webpages with nothing but a graphic, but sometimes it hits gold and downloads gigs of stuff. Of course this does nothing for my bandwidth, but it makes me feel better.
I saw "Senior Oracle DBA, Central London, 25K", fell about laughing, and moved on. Still, I suppose if they don't try they'll never know, and management are trying all sorts of bullshit at the moment simply cos they can.
Yes, but eventually one of those gorillas will say "This ground sure feels strange", then someone will shoot the ground with a blaster and the enormous aseroid worm called Microsoft will start to close its jaws...
Perhaps the maths don't add up. Suppose I were to jump ship and provide this sort of service. Ideally there would be nothing to do. Therefore the per-incident income would equal zero. If I were to pay myself a decent salary ($60k) I probably need twice that as company income, that's 120000/200=600 clients with an unlimited number of computers.
What if (2) came up with something? Would you pay for the patch, or would I be expected to patch 600*N computers essentially for free? N may be small for you but 600*N isn't going to be small for _anybody_. If I were simply to notify you when patches became available, that hardly fits any definition of "monitor[ing] these complex issues". So do I notify you of the availability of relevant patches? I suspect that personalised service alone would cost more than $200/year.
I appreciate that corporate goals change, and after supporting Linux extremely well for many years now you have decided to focus on corporate customers and drop your support for the consumer market. What I don't understand is why you said what you did, that Windows was better for this market? Perhaps it is at the moment, but there are other distributions still trying to change this, and I feel that your statement has now given them a major competitive disadvantage against Microsoft; all Microsoft needs to do is to state to any customer (by which I mean, for example, a PC retailer who sells PCs to the public preloaded with Windows and is now considering Linux as well) that even Red Hat, who should know, don't think that Linux is appropriate for their computers, and the relevant Linux vendor suddenly now has to patch up the hole you just created. Exit a game by all means, but why shoot the remaining players?
Mods: checked the reports on this for reasoning but didn't find anything; if I missed it please feel free to mod this to oblivion but I would still like to know.
Odd that they should refer to that particular paper, although it does suggest some understanding of the concepts of licencing, piracy et al; it seems odd he could have written such a paper with no understanding of the (however broken and/or wrong) current IP laws. Perhaps the fact that he was doing an INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LAW COURSE is mildly relevant; the courts do not generally look fondly upon one of their own that breaks the law.
> With ad-blocker's, an ad-supported content site owner has already lost the business
No, they keep the business, even if they've lost the original vision of what they are about. Slashdot is "news for nerds, stuff that matters" as I remember, not "ads for nerds, stuff that costs money". Ads are a sideline to raise cash for the content, but you are implying/.'s primary business is now an advertising site with a bit of content as a sideline. If that's what/. has degraded to, let it block the ad blockers and I'll quite happily take my eyeballs off to the Register or somewhere else./. hasn't lost my business because I've blocked the ads, it's kept my business because I could block them.
If/. blocks ad-blockers, then it will lose the business unless the ads become non-invasive. That means going back to non-animated banner ads - I don't mind looking at them cos they're not trying to draw my eyes from the content - I can glance at one of those, mutter something like "no, don't need a router today (unnecessary for home, not net admin at work)" and get on with reading the site. But now it's read a word - MUST NOT LOOK AT AD AGAIN - read another word - DAMN THAT FLASHY AD - read again, phew, have now scrolled that annoying ad off the screen.
I have only blocked/.'s ads since they became annoying. When they were a static banner ad at the top of the page, since they were usually relevant, I looked at them, read them, and in the case of the thinkgeek ads clicked through and often bought stuff. Now they're big fuck-off ads in the way that fill half the screen after about half a line of story, rather like Sky where you get about a microsecond of story followed by 15 hours of adverts, then another microsecond of story, then another 15 hours of adverts......bollocks to the lot of them.
That's neat. I get the "This is an advertising supported service, click here to continue to the message" screen, without the ad of course, but I wasn't aware it was possible to automatically click through as well. Could you post your rules?
Yep, that's fine. You'll lose business though, and maybe someone needs to try it and go out of business in doing so; however they will have the satisfaction of having stopped freeloaders reading their precious content.
Let me give you an illustration of how it will damage your business. I use Proxomitron, and have Javascript blocked by default, and enabled on a named site only basis (so if randompr0nsite.com just happens to have got into my good books and gets JS enabled, then decides to load up 200 of its partners' websites, the infinite cascade of windows stops there because those partners almost certainly aren't in my AllowJavascript.txt file.) Yesterday I was looking for a new PC, and went to Time Computers. Their website displays nothing at all for non-Javascript enabled browsers. Fine, I thought. So I went to Tiny instead. Their site worked partially, but the price display didn't work, and some other parts of the site didn't work. Then I went to HP's website (well, actually punched in compaq.com). That also didn't work properly, so I thought fuck this, and enabled Javascript. However, I only did this for the HP website, and it was the HP website that I picked my new computer off. NOT the Time website, where I started.
So yes - you can block your content, if you don't want the business. Time have obviously worked out that they can live without business from people who disable shitty Javascript. If you have worked out that you can live without people who don't want to view your ads, go ahead and block them. As there is always a competitor, you can expect them to grow stronger at your expense, just as HP are now one sale up on Time.
Haven't got anything with Bluetooth but I imagine there are two possibilities:
(1) it's a content-free "user wants to connect" message, and you don't know what the message is, so you say yes and get asked if you want a bigger penis.
(2) the message "get a bigger penis" appears on your phone and the damage is done.
All we need to do is exclaim "who's that wanker", then anyone looking suspicious in the centre of a 10m circle of people saying "who's that wanker" gets the crap beat out of them. Actual GBH against spammers is should be effective, which is the big advantage bluejacking has over the spammers' normal means of jacking off a load of messages.
Of course it blew up. They didn't have the deflector dish or the shields activated. Any idiot would know without them that it would blow up as soon as it started moving at any significant speed.
I'd like to see them retest with shields and deflector - then let's see how well it performs!
Oh ok. So MS promised to keep on marketing tablets; the HW mfrs purchased on that basis, then MS failed to live up to (i.e. broke) their promise? Seems like a cut and dry case for a lawsuit then - some sort of fraud going on there (by MS).
Er, pardon me for being thick, but what's this got to do with MS? You decided a Windows OS was best for your hardware, not Microsoft. If it's too expensive Use Something Else; it's a free market out there. Why should Microsoft pay to advertise your product for you?
If you had decided on Linux, would you have expected Linus Torvalds to launch an expensive advertising campaign for your benefit? Who advertised your car? Was it the car manufacturer, or a manufacturer of one of its components?
I'd like to see some actual evidence of this. In my own life the tax on fuel simply makes fuel more expensive; it doesn't restrict the mileage I do, and the businesses that suffer are those I can't buy stuff from because I'm too busy handing over cash to Tony in the form of Fuel Tax. Besides, the article didn't mention tax making people do less mileage; it talked about tax funding alternatives. Unfortunately all taxes in the UK go towards paying for government mistakes rather than what the taxes are actually labelled - road tax, for instance, about 10% of it is used on the roads, the rest pays for war with Iraq or other such nonsense.
> By introducing a small but steadily rising tax on petrol, America would do far more to encourage innovation and improve energy security than all the drilling in Alaska's wilderness.
My God it sounds like he actually believes this bullshit.
If it were true, then Britain, where drivers pay more per LITRE than Americans pay per GALLON due to excessive tax, which is at 85% of the price paid at the pump and rising, should be stuffed full of companies making alternatives to petrol. Is it? Is it??? Where the fsck are they all?
Conclusion: it's NOT true that taxes will solve the problem. It sounds plausible, but so do fscking Nigerian scam emails, but that doesn't make it true.
Well, it depends which one you get. My 125 that I learnt to ride on did about 100mpg, which was great, but couldn't lug my carcass around at more than 40mph, 45mph downhill with a favourable wind. So I upgraded to a Yamaha Fazer 600 which does about 45mpg - about 10mpl. This is no better than the Volkswagen Passat I had a few years ago, although considerably better than the Lexus I now own (which does about 20mpg), and of course considerably more fun to drive.
Considered converting the Lexus to LPG but overall it seems that LPG would only save around 20-25% on my fuel bill (LPG is about half the price of petrol, but the car would only do about 15mpg, based on the stats of someone who's actually done it). Significant yes, but not as significant as the LPG lobby would have us believe, and I don't use the car enough to make the initial investment worthwhile.
I've done 8000 miles over the last year. That's 1820 litres=UKP1365 - LPG saving UKP341.25 tops. Cost to install LPG - UKP2000. Doesn't work for me, and of course you lose out on boot space. As others say, if fuel cost is the issue, don't get a Lexus. If the Government paid for the conversion, rather than just making less on the LPG tax, I would do it, but it's just not worth it.
Half a caveat. If they have a patent you can't duplicate the design. A patent doesn't mean you can't create template machines *at all*, only that you can't create one to that particular design. Dyson's patent on vortices didn't put Hoover out of business; it only meant they had to pay him a royalty for creating vortex-driven vacuum cleaners; their previous designs were not affected.
Pay for the licence with a cheque with an EULA that states the cheque cannot be sold, lent or otherwise transferred to another party (including a bank), and that they cannot give away the money represented by that cheque to others, whether in exchange for goods or services or not.
After all, you are only verifying their honesty that only they will use the money and they will not be passing it around to others to use for free.
Ok, let's treat this hammer not as a tool, but as a pattern (for banging in nails). What would seem reasonable with this pattern, and perhaps more importantly if we don't call a spade a spade is it reasonable to assume it can't be a spade?
Would it be reasonable to make copies of this hammer and give them to one's friends to use in their own workshops? Yes, providing I copy the concept and not just the implementation. If OP creates a template machine to a different design from the template machine he has licenced, there is no law against that, and the EULA is an attempt to change that. If he duplicates the design of the original machine, then perhaps there is a law against that (patents?), and perhaps the EULA is an attempt at achieving the same protection without the expense of a patent. But saying you can't use a template machine to make template machines is just ridiculous, like an EULA on a compiler that says you can't make compilers with it (as Borland found to their expense some years ago).
If I lent the hammer to my friend for him to bang in nails, that would seem reasonable.
If I lent the hammer to my friend, he made a copy of that hammer, then used the copy to bang in nails - hmm. Don't see what's wrong with that, providing of course it isn't a new inventive way of hammering, e.g using spider silk and cotton wool instead of the usual stick and block of iron, or a particularly aerodynamically shaped block of iron.
The "purpose" of tools is to make things. With a sufficiently complex set of tools, you can recreate those tools out of new material. We've been able to do this for CENTURIES, and the laws for and against certain kinds of replication are equally ancient.
So, OP, consult a lawyer. If you bought, er, I mean, licenced this machine with a view to creating template machines or lending it to your friends, then you may need to get the licence tested in court, if your lawyer agrees you have a case.
Slashdot Mirror
I worked for a pipe organ builder as a holiday job for a few months.
Um, all of them. That's part of the design of the organ - making sure that the blower is capable of supporting the largest possible chord the organist can play. If that means all stops, all couplers, no duplicated notes (e.g. middle C on manual 1 and middle C on manual 2), then for a massive organ you're going to get an equally massive blower. Even the largest organ has a limited amount of air to deal with, but that is always enough to support what the organ can theoretically pump out. Any organ builders that didn't equip their organs will large enough blowers would soon be found out and equally rapidly go out of business (unless it was specced out that way, which is unlikely - just about the first thing an organist does on the commissioning of a new organ is yank out all the stops and see if he can blow the church roof off and it would be immediately obvious if the builder had only done a half-arsed job).
Wow, just listened to that Ad Nos sample. Amazing. Just as you think it can't possibly get any bigger, it does exactly that. Several times. Stunning. That extra bit on the top of the last note - blimey.
...is the Suse 8.2 FTP installation. Ok, you want to install SuSe? Pick a network module.
WTF????? Windows has had network card autodetection for CENTURIES*. Why in 20MB it couldn't work it out for itself is beyond me; surely a few hundred bytes of extra code wouldn't hurt.
*It had it last century, and it has is this century. Ok, elapsed time is probably less than a decade, but it sounds more impressive this way.
Do builders have contracts that say "any DIY you do at home belongs to us", or "Sorry, you can't build shelves for your friends and charge them for it because that's a violation of our IP?"
Still, if you signed it then you signed it. Can't see how it could be considered reasonable though. So you benefitted from your knowledge while working there? Why is that such a problem? Can we have a reverse clause that says that if the stock goes up while I'm working there, that I now own the company?
> I thought /. was the source for fair and balanced coverage.
Ah, you must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot. Anything Microsoft do is automatically wrong here, even if it's right. If MS were to eat the RIAA for breakfast, that'd be wrong. If MS were to overturn software patents, that also would be wrong. Coverage here is fair and balanced if you're not Microsoft. Or SCO. Or *AA. Or....well, just about anyone really.
It's not even fair and balanced if it's Linux. Anything ESR, FSF or Linus do is automatically right, even if it's wrong. If Eric bombed Washington DC, that'd be ok. If Linus joined the Taliban, that'd be cool. Linux is always better than Windows and OSS is always better than CSS, even if they're actually crapper.
Also, such twaddle as "In Soviet Russia, MS Exchange configures YOU!", "1. (anything) 2. ??? 3. Profit!!" and "I, for one, welcome our new (subject of the day) overlords" is funny.
(well, easier for me anyway)
.htm file. I publish the htm file on the WinXP webserver, then set WebReaper to download that page plus everything linked to it to a depth of 4 servers (the original page, the spammer, the friends of that spammer, and the friends of those twats). Oh, then I shift-Delete the lot, restart WebReaper, and repeat until bored.
A short C program to randomise the identification codes in a spam, a web server, and a downloader such as WebReaper.
From a spam I take the URL, e.g.
http://spammer.com/script.cgi?id=12345 and convert it to
http://spammer.com/script.cgi?id=#####
the C program loops over this N times where N depends on how hacked off with spam I'm feeling, converting the # to random digits and adding the new URL to a
Most of the time it just hits single webpages with nothing but a graphic, but sometimes it hits gold and downloads gigs of stuff. Of course this does nothing for my bandwidth, but it makes me feel better.
I saw "Senior Oracle DBA, Central London, 25K", fell about laughing, and moved on. Still, I suppose if they don't try they'll never know, and management are trying all sorts of bullshit at the moment simply cos they can.
Yes, but eventually one of those gorillas will say "This ground sure feels strange", then someone will shoot the ground with a blaster and the enormous aseroid worm called Microsoft will start to close its jaws...
Perhaps the maths don't add up. Suppose I were to jump ship and provide this sort of service. Ideally there would be nothing to do. Therefore the per-incident income would equal zero. If I were to pay myself a decent salary ($60k) I probably need twice that as company income, that's 120000/200=600 clients with an unlimited number of computers.
What if (2) came up with something? Would you pay for the patch, or would I be expected to patch 600*N computers essentially for free? N may be small for you but 600*N isn't going to be small for _anybody_. If I were simply to notify you when patches became available, that hardly fits any definition of "monitor[ing] these complex issues". So do I notify you of the availability of relevant patches? I suspect that personalised service alone would cost more than $200/year.
I appreciate that corporate goals change, and after supporting Linux extremely well for many years now you have decided to focus on corporate customers and drop your support for the consumer market. What I don't understand is why you said what you did, that Windows was better for this market? Perhaps it is at the moment, but there are other distributions still trying to change this, and I feel that your statement has now given them a major competitive disadvantage against Microsoft; all Microsoft needs to do is to state to any customer (by which I mean, for example, a PC retailer who sells PCs to the public preloaded with Windows and is now considering Linux as well) that even Red Hat, who should know, don't think that Linux is appropriate for their computers, and the relevant Linux vendor suddenly now has to patch up the hole you just created. Exit a game by all means, but why shoot the remaining players?
Mods: checked the reports on this for reasoning but didn't find anything; if I missed it please feel free to mod this to oblivion but I would still like to know.
Good job SCO weren't also working on and giving away Linux then. That would have seriously weakened their case.
Odd that they should refer to that particular paper, although it does suggest some understanding of the concepts of licencing, piracy et al; it seems odd he could have written such a paper with no understanding of the (however broken and/or wrong) current IP laws. Perhaps the fact that he was doing an INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LAW COURSE is mildly relevant; the courts do not generally look fondly upon one of their own that breaks the law.
> With ad-blocker's, an ad-supported content site owner has already lost the business
/.'s primary business is now an advertising site with a bit of content as a sideline. If that's what /. has degraded to, let it block the ad blockers and I'll quite happily take my eyeballs off to the Register or somewhere else. /. hasn't lost my business because I've blocked the ads, it's kept my business because I could block them.
/. blocks ad-blockers, then it will lose the business unless the ads become non-invasive. That means going back to non-animated banner ads - I don't mind looking at them cos they're not trying to draw my eyes from the content - I can glance at one of those, mutter something like "no, don't need a router today (unnecessary for home, not net admin at work)" and get on with reading the site. But now it's read a word - MUST NOT LOOK AT AD AGAIN - read another word - DAMN THAT FLASHY AD - read again, phew, have now scrolled that annoying ad off the screen.
/.'s ads since they became annoying. When they were a static banner ad at the top of the page, since they were usually relevant, I looked at them, read them, and in the case of the thinkgeek ads clicked through and often bought stuff. Now they're big fuck-off ads in the way that fill half the screen after about half a line of story, rather like Sky where you get about a microsecond of story followed by 15 hours of adverts, then another microsecond of story, then another 15 hours of adverts......bollocks to the lot of them.
No, they keep the business, even if they've lost the original vision of what they are about. Slashdot is "news for nerds, stuff that matters" as I remember, not "ads for nerds, stuff that costs money". Ads are a sideline to raise cash for the content, but you are implying
If
I have only blocked
oh no, not the fish jokes, not in this plaice...
That's neat. I get the "This is an advertising supported service, click here to continue to the message" screen, without the ad of course, but I wasn't aware it was possible to automatically click through as well. Could you post your rules?
Yep, that's fine. You'll lose business though, and maybe someone needs to try it and go out of business in doing so; however they will have the satisfaction of having stopped freeloaders reading their precious content.
Let me give you an illustration of how it will damage your business. I use Proxomitron, and have Javascript blocked by default, and enabled on a named site only basis (so if randompr0nsite.com just happens to have got into my good books and gets JS enabled, then decides to load up 200 of its partners' websites, the infinite cascade of windows stops there because those partners almost certainly aren't in my AllowJavascript.txt file.) Yesterday I was looking for a new PC, and went to Time Computers. Their website displays nothing at all for non-Javascript enabled browsers. Fine, I thought. So I went to Tiny instead. Their site worked partially, but the price display didn't work, and some other parts of the site didn't work. Then I went to HP's website (well, actually punched in compaq.com). That also didn't work properly, so I thought fuck this, and enabled Javascript. However, I only did this for the HP website, and it was the HP website that I picked my new computer off. NOT the Time website, where I started.
So yes - you can block your content, if you don't want the business. Time have obviously worked out that they can live without business from people who disable shitty Javascript. If you have worked out that you can live without people who don't want to view your ads, go ahead and block them. As there is always a competitor, you can expect them to grow stronger at your expense, just as HP are now one sale up on Time.
Haven't got anything with Bluetooth but I imagine there are two possibilities:
(1) it's a content-free "user wants to connect" message, and you don't know what the message is, so you say yes and get asked if you want a bigger penis.
(2) the message "get a bigger penis" appears on your phone and the damage is done.
All we need to do is exclaim "who's that wanker", then anyone looking suspicious in the centre of a 10m circle of people saying "who's that wanker" gets the crap beat out of them. Actual GBH against spammers is should be effective, which is the big advantage bluejacking has over the spammers' normal means of jacking off a load of messages.
Of course it blew up. They didn't have the deflector dish or the shields activated. Any idiot would know without them that it would blow up as soon as it started moving at any significant speed.
I'd like to see them retest with shields and deflector - then let's see how well it performs!
Oh ok. So MS promised to keep on marketing tablets; the HW mfrs purchased on that basis, then MS failed to live up to (i.e. broke) their promise? Seems like a cut and dry case for a lawsuit then - some sort of fraud going on there (by MS).
Er, pardon me for being thick, but what's this got to do with MS? You decided a Windows OS was best for your hardware, not Microsoft. If it's too expensive Use Something Else; it's a free market out there. Why should Microsoft pay to advertise your product for you?
If you had decided on Linux, would you have expected Linus Torvalds to launch an expensive advertising campaign for your benefit? Who advertised your car? Was it the car manufacturer, or a manufacturer of one of its components?
I'd like to see some actual evidence of this. In my own life the tax on fuel simply makes fuel more expensive; it doesn't restrict the mileage I do, and the businesses that suffer are those I can't buy stuff from because I'm too busy handing over cash to Tony in the form of Fuel Tax. Besides, the article didn't mention tax making people do less mileage; it talked about tax funding alternatives. Unfortunately all taxes in the UK go towards paying for government mistakes rather than what the taxes are actually labelled - road tax, for instance, about 10% of it is used on the roads, the rest pays for war with Iraq or other such nonsense.
> By introducing a small but steadily rising tax on petrol, America would do far more to encourage innovation and improve energy security than all the drilling in Alaska's wilderness.
My God it sounds like he actually believes this bullshit.
If it were true, then Britain, where drivers pay more per LITRE than Americans pay per GALLON due to excessive tax, which is at 85% of the price paid at the pump and rising, should be stuffed full of companies making alternatives to petrol. Is it? Is it??? Where the fsck are they all?
Conclusion: it's NOT true that taxes will solve the problem. It sounds plausible, but so do fscking Nigerian scam emails, but that doesn't make it true.
>Not only are [motorbikes] more fuel efficient
Well, it depends which one you get. My 125 that I learnt to ride on did about 100mpg, which was great, but couldn't lug my carcass around at more than 40mph, 45mph downhill with a favourable wind. So I upgraded to a Yamaha Fazer 600 which does about 45mpg - about 10mpl. This is no better than the Volkswagen Passat I had a few years ago, although considerably better than the Lexus I now own (which does about 20mpg), and of course considerably more fun to drive.
Considered converting the Lexus to LPG but overall it seems that LPG would only save around 20-25% on my fuel bill (LPG is about half the price of petrol, but the car would only do about 15mpg, based on the stats of someone who's actually done it). Significant yes, but not as significant as the LPG lobby would have us believe, and I don't use the car enough to make the initial investment worthwhile.
I've done 8000 miles over the last year. That's 1820 litres=UKP1365 - LPG saving UKP341.25 tops. Cost to install LPG - UKP2000. Doesn't work for me, and of course you lose out on boot space. As others say, if fuel cost is the issue, don't get a Lexus. If the Government paid for the conversion, rather than just making less on the LPG tax, I would do it, but it's just not worth it.
Half a caveat. If they have a patent you can't duplicate the design. A patent doesn't mean you can't create template machines *at all*, only that you can't create one to that particular design. Dyson's patent on vortices didn't put Hoover out of business; it only meant they had to pay him a royalty for creating vortex-driven vacuum cleaners; their previous designs were not affected.
Pay for the licence with a cheque with an EULA that states the cheque cannot be sold, lent or otherwise transferred to another party (including a bank), and that they cannot give away the money represented by that cheque to others, whether in exchange for goods or services or not.
After all, you are only verifying their honesty that only they will use the money and they will not be passing it around to others to use for free.
Ok, let's treat this hammer not as a tool, but as a pattern (for banging in nails). What would seem reasonable with this pattern, and perhaps more importantly if we don't call a spade a spade is it reasonable to assume it can't be a spade?
Would it be reasonable to make copies of this hammer and give them to one's friends to use in their own workshops? Yes, providing I copy the concept and not just the implementation. If OP creates a template machine to a different design from the template machine he has licenced, there is no law against that, and the EULA is an attempt to change that. If he duplicates the design of the original machine, then perhaps there is a law against that (patents?), and perhaps the EULA is an attempt at achieving the same protection without the expense of a patent. But saying you can't use a template machine to make template machines is just ridiculous, like an EULA on a compiler that says you can't make compilers with it (as Borland found to their expense some years ago).
If I lent the hammer to my friend for him to bang in nails, that would seem reasonable.
If I lent the hammer to my friend, he made a copy of that hammer, then used the copy to bang in nails - hmm. Don't see what's wrong with that, providing of course it isn't a new inventive way of hammering, e.g using spider silk and cotton wool instead of the usual stick and block of iron, or a particularly aerodynamically shaped block of iron.
The "purpose" of tools is to make things. With a sufficiently complex set of tools, you can recreate those tools out of new material. We've been able to do this for CENTURIES, and the laws for and against certain kinds of replication are equally ancient.
So, OP, consult a lawyer. If you bought, er, I mean, licenced this machine with a view to creating template machines or lending it to your friends, then you may need to get the licence tested in court, if your lawyer agrees you have a case.