No it isn't. The physical medium wasn't prepared by Microsoft or one of its legitimate manufacturing partners.
The "copy" is the data, not the medium it's on. If I (illegally) download a Windows XP ISO from the Internet, and burn it onto a CD-R, I still own the physical CD-R, just not the copy of Windows on the CD-R.
What if buy Windows XP legally, and rip the CD to an ISO image, as a backup? Legit and legal, yet the physical medium (my hard drive) was neither "prepared" by MS or one of its "legitimate manufacturing partners." (I'm assuming it's legal to back up my XP CD, anyway; if it's not, we've got bigger problems.)
Then let's say I transfer that ISO image over the Internet, to someone else's hard drive. The ISO they have is identical bit-for-bit with the ISO I have, and yet neither hard drive was "prepared" as you suggest. My ISO is "genuine" and his is "counterfeit"? Those terms are nonsensical for indistinguishable items. (Hell, the term "Genuine Copy" is enough to provoke gales of laughter by itself.)
I'm not saying it's not illegal to do this, I'm merely arguing with Microsoft's attempts to redefine English to suit their purposes.
Here's a fun thought experiment: Buy Windows XP. Install one copy on each of two identical computers, at exactly the same time, in violation of the EULA (and, presumably, copyright law as well). Which one is the genuine copy, and which one is the counterfeit?
Having a fake hundred dollar bill that's identical right down to the fiber doesn't make it any less counterfeit.
I posted elsewhere about people who try to apply physical metaphors to the duplication of information. You make a fine example.
Inasmuch as pirated copies of Windows are fraudulent copies, they are NOT genuine.
I disagree. Say I buy Windows XP, and then make a backup copy of the CD, so that should my original CD be destroyed, I still have a CD I can install from. Is that a genuine copy? There's no intent to defraud, and dictionary.com's definition of "counterfeit" (sense 3, the only noun sense that's not marked as "archaic" or "obsolete") is "an imitation intended to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively as genuine; forgery." A backup copy is quite definitely not intended to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively.
And it's also not a forgery. "Forgery", according to the esteemed dictionary.com, has a few senses which might apply. Sense 3 is "something, as a coin, a work of art, or a writing, produced by forgery." "Forgery" in that sentence refers to sense 2: "the production of a spurious work that is claimed to be genuine, as a coin, a painting, or the like." Does that sense apply? I'll be generous and assume that "or the like" could cover digital information such as software. Is a burned copy of a Windows XP CD a "spurious" copy? Since it's indistinguishable, and preserves (in an information theory sense) 100% of the information in the original, it can't reasonably be called a "spurious work"; it IS the original work, by definition.
Now imagine, six months later, I lend that backup copy I made to a friend so that he can install XP for free. He knows I bought XP, he knows I made a backup, and he's under no illusions that he has the legal right to install it. Now is it a counterfeit copy? If it is, then you're claiming that whether or not something is "genuine" can change depending on what someone does with it, irrespective of the nature of the object itself. A genuine Picasso can never become a counterfeit, even if I were to steal it from its owner and sell it to someone else. It's still a genuine Picasso.
But a copy of Windows that was previously "genuine" can suddenly become "counterfeit" merely because I give the copy to someone? I reject that on strictly linguistic grounds. And I'm not even a linguist.
The general problem is when people take metaphors that apply to physical objects and then try to apply them to the replication of information. The specific problem here is that MS touts "Windows Genuine Advantage" as if it's somehow advantageous to you to confirm that you have a "genuine" copy of Windows. It is not even remotely so; it is only to Microsoft's benefit.
They are fighting against counterfeit copies of Windows, so their use of the word is correct in a literal sense.
Except that a "counterfeit" copy of Windows is identical in every conceivable way to a "genuine" copy. Whether a copy is "counterfeit," according to Microsoft, depends entirely and ONLY on whether you paid Microsoft what they charge for a copy. In all other respects, they're indistinguishable. That's why it's a linguistic clusterfuck.
The comments about why it's a bad idea (mostly) aren't saying that forking itself is a bad idea, they're saying that the particular way he's forking is doomed for one reason or another.
So in that case he'd have to replace the marriage? Well, I guess he could find himself on the receiving end of those 178 dominant men. "Ponying up" indeed.
That's why the proper method is to alert the developers privately first. Give them a short amount of time to find, fix, and release a patch or new version. If they haven't done it in a reasonable time (usually 3-10 days, depending on the severity and complexity of the bug), then you announce it publicly.
The problem with the way that they show vampires can't exist (geometric progression) is that they assume that no vampires ever die. In most vampire fiction, vampires are frequently killed via wooden stake, sunlight, fire, decapitation, or other means. So as long as the rate of vampire death was high enough, vampires could continue to exist in small numbers, without wiping out humans.
There's also the fact that most vampire fiction these days doesn't assume that being bitten automatically turns you into a vampire. Frequently, not only do you have to be fed off by a vampire, but then you have to in turn feed from that vampire (who will willingly open a vein to you if they want to turn you). Otherwise, they drain you dry, and then you're just a corpse, and the vampire moves on.
There's lots of OTHER reasons vampires can't exist (no mechanism for infectious transmission of some agent that would make you immortal, super-strong, and disintegrate on contact with sunlight, and transparent to photons which would otherwise strike a mirror), but their reductio ad absurdum forgets a major point.
The problem is not that an "incorrect" definition of planet is being used, it's that there is no clear definition of what constitutes a planet.
Nor is there any need whatsoever for a clear definition of what "planet" means. It has only colloquial meaning, even to scientists; when it's crucially important to know precisely which body or bodies someone's referring to, you ask for a list.
I was addicted to WoW. It got to the point where it was interfering with taking care of other things around the house, and occasionally paying attention to my kid. I finally quit cold-turkey a few weeks ago, and I'm glad I did. The game's fun, but it's just a game; I kept looking at it as "gotta accomplish more, gotta get all these characters to 60, etc."
One train of thought that helps kill my desire to play goes like this (it's sort of a mantra I run through every so often):
1. Wouldn't it be cool to play WoW in god mode, and have all the best equipment, skills, be able to kill everything in 1 hit, etc.? 2. Yeah, for about five minutes, but then it would get boring like god mode always does in games. It's better to accomplish things honestly, within the limits of the game. 3. Wait, accomplish? What accomplishment is there, exactly, in manipulating an interface that is essentially flipping bits on a hard drive somewhere? It's a game, it should be for entertainment; not some kind of to-do list. 4. WoW is still a little entertaining, but I've played two characters to level 60, and one each to 57, 55, 50, 48, 46, 33... I've seen pretty much all the content that doesn't require hours of raiding. Okay, I think I'm done.
Today, if a movie doesn't produce big time within a couple of weeks, the studios lose money.
Wrong. Most studio films earn the majority of their income from DVD sales, not box office. Theatrical release is a combination of loss-leader and advertising for the DVD release. Some films manage to turn a profit for the studios, but that's not the business model.
Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?" Fry: "Well sure, but not in our dreams! Only on tv and radio...and in magazines...and movies. And at ball games, on buses, and milk cartons, and t-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree."
You'll probably be interested to know that black people get pulled over more often than white people (nationwide, statistically), but in terms of percentage of pull-overs that result in the driver being arrested, white people are arrested far more often than black people.
What I don't get is people who have some kind of obscure video driver problem with Linux, and then assume that everyone has the same problems and only people who are hardcore into fixing such problems have the time to use Linux. I mean, yeah, I know such things happened, it's happened to me with one or two distros on one or two machines over the years, but for the most part, I install a distro and it runs fine.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, was born Antonio Villar. When he married his wife (Corina Raigosa), they decided to combine their names, forming Villaraigosa. It's the only example of name-combining that I know of personally, but it's a pretty prominent one.
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The "copy" is the data, not the medium it's on. If I (illegally) download a Windows XP ISO from the Internet, and burn it onto a CD-R, I still own the physical CD-R, just not the copy of Windows on the CD-R.
What if buy Windows XP legally, and rip the CD to an ISO image, as a backup? Legit and legal, yet the physical medium (my hard drive) was neither "prepared" by MS or one of its "legitimate manufacturing partners." (I'm assuming it's legal to back up my XP CD, anyway; if it's not, we've got bigger problems.)
Then let's say I transfer that ISO image over the Internet, to someone else's hard drive. The ISO they have is identical bit-for-bit with the ISO I have, and yet neither hard drive was "prepared" as you suggest. My ISO is "genuine" and his is "counterfeit"? Those terms are nonsensical for indistinguishable items. (Hell, the term "Genuine Copy" is enough to provoke gales of laughter by itself.)
I'm not saying it's not illegal to do this, I'm merely arguing with Microsoft's attempts to redefine English to suit their purposes.
Here's a fun thought experiment: Buy Windows XP. Install one copy on each of two identical computers, at exactly the same time, in violation of the EULA (and, presumably, copyright law as well). Which one is the genuine copy, and which one is the counterfeit?
I posted elsewhere about people who try to apply physical metaphors to the duplication of information. You make a fine example.
I disagree. Say I buy Windows XP, and then make a backup copy of the CD, so that should my original CD be destroyed, I still have a CD I can install from. Is that a genuine copy? There's no intent to defraud, and dictionary.com's definition of "counterfeit" (sense 3, the only noun sense that's not marked as "archaic" or "obsolete") is "an imitation intended to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively as genuine; forgery." A backup copy is quite definitely not intended to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively.
And it's also not a forgery. "Forgery", according to the esteemed dictionary.com, has a few senses which might apply. Sense 3 is "something, as a coin, a work of art, or a writing, produced by forgery." "Forgery" in that sentence refers to sense 2: "the production of a spurious work that is claimed to be genuine, as a coin, a painting, or the like." Does that sense apply? I'll be generous and assume that "or the like" could cover digital information such as software. Is a burned copy of a Windows XP CD a "spurious" copy? Since it's indistinguishable, and preserves (in an information theory sense) 100% of the information in the original, it can't reasonably be called a "spurious work"; it IS the original work, by definition.
Now imagine, six months later, I lend that backup copy I made to a friend so that he can install XP for free. He knows I bought XP, he knows I made a backup, and he's under no illusions that he has the legal right to install it. Now is it a counterfeit copy? If it is, then you're claiming that whether or not something is "genuine" can change depending on what someone does with it, irrespective of the nature of the object itself. A genuine Picasso can never become a counterfeit, even if I were to steal it from its owner and sell it to someone else. It's still a genuine Picasso.
But a copy of Windows that was previously "genuine" can suddenly become "counterfeit" merely because I give the copy to someone? I reject that on strictly linguistic grounds. And I'm not even a linguist.
The general problem is when people take metaphors that apply to physical objects and then try to apply them to the replication of information. The specific problem here is that MS touts "Windows Genuine Advantage" as if it's somehow advantageous to you to confirm that you have a "genuine" copy of Windows. It is not even remotely so; it is only to Microsoft's benefit.
Except that a "counterfeit" copy of Windows is identical in every conceivable way to a "genuine" copy. Whether a copy is "counterfeit," according to Microsoft, depends entirely and ONLY on whether you paid Microsoft what they charge for a copy. In all other respects, they're indistinguishable. That's why it's a linguistic clusterfuck.
The comments about why it's a bad idea (mostly) aren't saying that forking itself is a bad idea, they're saying that the particular way he's forking is doomed for one reason or another.
Hands? Luxury!
"I've got just as much authority as the Pope, just not as many people who believe it." - George Carlin
The preferred term is "interspecies erotica."
Oh, please! We hyper-intelligent shades of blue know better than to omit the hyphen in "carbon-based."
That's why the proper method is to alert the developers privately first. Give them a short amount of time to find, fix, and release a patch or new version. If they haven't done it in a reasonable time (usually 3-10 days, depending on the severity and complexity of the bug), then you announce it publicly.
The problem with the way that they show vampires can't exist (geometric progression) is that they assume that no vampires ever die. In most vampire fiction, vampires are frequently killed via wooden stake, sunlight, fire, decapitation, or other means. So as long as the rate of vampire death was high enough, vampires could continue to exist in small numbers, without wiping out humans.
There's also the fact that most vampire fiction these days doesn't assume that being bitten automatically turns you into a vampire. Frequently, not only do you have to be fed off by a vampire, but then you have to in turn feed from that vampire (who will willingly open a vein to you if they want to turn you). Otherwise, they drain you dry, and then you're just a corpse, and the vampire moves on.
There's lots of OTHER reasons vampires can't exist (no mechanism for infectious transmission of some agent that would make you immortal, super-strong, and disintegrate on contact with sunlight, and transparent to photons which would otherwise strike a mirror), but their reductio ad absurdum forgets a major point.
There's an old saying about movies -- audiences will accept the impossible but not the improbable.
What about self-defense?
What the hell are your eyes made of?!
I wouldn't really call what faith offers "knowledge". "Speculation" would be more like it.
Nor is there any need whatsoever for a clear definition of what "planet" means. It has only colloquial meaning, even to scientists; when it's crucially important to know precisely which body or bodies someone's referring to, you ask for a list.
This is a tremendous nonissue.
I was addicted to WoW. It got to the point where it was interfering with taking care of other things around the house, and occasionally paying attention to my kid. I finally quit cold-turkey a few weeks ago, and I'm glad I did. The game's fun, but it's just a game; I kept looking at it as "gotta accomplish more, gotta get all these characters to 60, etc."
One train of thought that helps kill my desire to play goes like this (it's sort of a mantra I run through every so often):
1. Wouldn't it be cool to play WoW in god mode, and have all the best equipment, skills, be able to kill everything in 1 hit, etc.?
2. Yeah, for about five minutes, but then it would get boring like god mode always does in games. It's better to accomplish things honestly, within the limits of the game.
3. Wait, accomplish? What accomplishment is there, exactly, in manipulating an interface that is essentially flipping bits on a hard drive somewhere? It's a game, it should be for entertainment; not some kind of to-do list.
4. WoW is still a little entertaining, but I've played two characters to level 60, and one each to 57, 55, 50, 48, 46, 33... I've seen pretty much all the content that doesn't require hours of raiding. Okay, I think I'm done.
Hey, I've been trying to find that quote in the Bible! Which book/chapter/verse is it in? Thanks!
Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
Fry: "Well sure, but not in our dreams! Only on tv and radio...and in magazines...and movies. And at ball games, on buses, and milk cartons, and t-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree."
Wait, maybe I'm thinking of Jack Sparrow...
You'll probably be interested to know that black people get pulled over more often than white people (nationwide, statistically), but in terms of percentage of pull-overs that result in the driver being arrested, white people are arrested far more often than black people.
You can draw your own conclusions.
What I don't get is people who have some kind of obscure video driver problem with Linux, and then assume that everyone has the same problems and only people who are hardcore into fixing such problems have the time to use Linux. I mean, yeah, I know such things happened, it's happened to me with one or two distros on one or two machines over the years, but for the most part, I install a distro and it runs fine.
The mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, was born Antonio Villar. When he married his wife (Corina Raigosa), they decided to combine their names, forming Villaraigosa. It's the only example of name-combining that I know of personally, but it's a pretty prominent one.