After 5 or 6 calls, I picked up to see what there problem was, they don't even have a person on the other end, the machine waits for something that sounds like a voice and then attempts to connect you to a service rep. I never play those games -- just say "Hello" once and wait. Twice and the computer knows they have a bite on the hook.
So what you're saying is that you deliberately prevented their dialer from connecting you to a human being, and then blame them for dead air calls and say it's harrassment?
If you enjoy playing such a silly game, I guess that's your business, but if anyone was "harrassing" you it was you yourself.
It's an annoying POS. But seriously, just fill it out with bogus info and be done with it. Make sure you uncheck all the boxes that say you want to be spammed, and use uce@ftc.gov as your email address, so when they try to spam you anyway it saves you time reporting it...
Yeah, they aren't my favourite phone calls either, but calling it "bullying" or "harrassing" is either rhetorical extravagance or a revelation of a serious mental problem on your part. It's a freakin phone call. Harrassment is possible, but if they're seriously harrassing you there are ways to deal with that - and I've never even heard of that happening. What on earth would they have to gain? Harrassment doesn't get sales. And to bully you would require that they could actually do something to threaten you with, they can't, they're a voice on the other end of a phone, they can't hurt you.
I get telemarketer calls all the time. It usually goes like this. Pick up the phone, listen to spiel long enough to determine I am not interested (3-4 seconds) - interrupt and say "sorry, not interested, better luck next call" and hang up. Once in awhile someone actually calls with something I'm even interested in (promotional offer on something I'm thinking about buying already.) Either way, there's no bullying or harrassment. And, most importantly, they call on their dime. The trouble with spammers is they call on my dime. I would never buy anything from a spammer, even if they did have a good deal on something I wanted. If a telemarketer called with such an offer I'd have no problem with it though.
Google has to do a lot to process a page. It tries to analyze the content, it crossreferences complex networks of linking, building a very complicated database for searching.
A spammer-spider can be much more simple, and thus move much more quickly. All it is interested in are email addresses. Period.
DOS is not trademarked or trademarkable
on
FreeDOS
·
· Score: 3, Informative
This is silly. DOS is an acronym, standing for Disk Operating System. MS-DOS is just one of many DOSs that have existed over the years. Now PC-DOS was basically MS-DOS, but DR-DOS was an entirely independant codebase. (Well, not entirely, it was developed from CPM by Digital Research who actually owned CP/M, while MS-DOS is derived from a CP/M knockoff called QDOS, but the point is DR-DOS was not an MS-DOS derivative.) But that was hardly the first DOS by any means. AmigaDOS ring a bell? AppleDOS?
I believe the first OS to bear the name DOS actually ran on an ancient (pre-x86) IBM box, but I could be wrong. At any rate, there is no trademark infringement problem with the acronym DOS, it was in wide use well before MS-DOS came around.
heres a little story, about how a popular open relay database decided to add a tier 1 isp's entire ARIN/RIPE listed address space to their list. after being told repetitively that a tier 1 isp isn't responsible for the thousands of mail servers it's downstreams have (and therefor the associated open relays)
I disagree. You are very much responsible. Now, granted, you can't be expected to actually administer those systems. If one of your sub-leased addresses winds up used by a spammer, that doesn't mean right off you've done anything wrong. But... if reasonable efforts are made to address the situation with the sub-leasee, and they aren't willing to deal with the situation, then it does become your responsibility.
If that was actually what happened, and you just said "not our problem" then you were as guilty as the spammers. Moreso really.
To answer the first: There is no "latest version". When Microsoft releases a Version N, that's it. If they roll patches into it, it then becomes Version N.1, or.5, or whatever. So, you'll still have to apply the patch.
Well that's a rather odd way of looking at it. When I mean latest version, I'm including the.x... in this case it seems the latest version of IE 5.5 is 5.50.4807.2300. Hrmm you're right though, it does still have to be patched. Just found the bugger. All patched now. Grr. A lot of work for how often I use that POS.
As for 6 on 98 or ME, no, I've not tried it. I have run it on Win2K, though, and it looked just the same as on XP. XP adds the green circles on the forward/back arrows, and lots of color to the rest of the toolbar. On win2k, those were not there. They shouldn't be there on 98 or ME, either, but since I've not tried it I can't say for sure. Are you sure you didn't download the MSN Explorer? That's a completely different product, and it does have the cartoony, Mozilla-ish look to it. If the top bar has large icons, with things like Hotmail email, that's definitely MSN Explorer [msn.com]. You want Internet Explorer [microsoft.com]. MSN Explorer is a shell around IE, so if you use that, you have to figure out what version of IE you have installed, and patch against that version.
Well it's been quite awhile since I've had IE 6 installed here, but I remember thinking it was ugly and cartoonish. Certainly all I have seen of it recently was on a friends machine that has MSN Explorer though, so you may be right I was conflating the two in my mind as I can't seem to remember what it actually looked like when I had 6 here, just that I disliked it.
Eventually I'm sure they will completely deprecate 5.5. Gah, hopefully I won't need a windows box anymore by then, I really hate to have to have that whole mess on my computer just to use windows update and read KB docs.
Ok so first answer is that it does affect 5.5 but not if I download the latest version?
And as to the second, have you *tried* 6 on a 98 or ME system? It does indeed look very different. Godawful ugly as Mozilla, and that's saying something.
Apparently you have actual followed this story, could you clarify something for me? Glancing through the page about it I got the impression this only concerns MSIE 6.x with MSN Messenger, correct? I ask because I normally use Opera for my windows box, but I do keep a copy of MSIE for the occasion when I really must access a mangled webpage (such as microsoft.com) - BUT I found MSIE 6 to be so aesthetically revolting I destroyed it utterly and went back to running the latest MSIE 5 instead. Sooo... basically I don't need to worry about this problem at all, right?
The parent comment is currently at (Score:0, Troll). It is not a troll, it is completely accurate.
From the article:
The mine is then crushed by a hydraulically operated hammer positioned beneath the cowl, but it does not explode, because of the hammer's high velocity, the company said. The hammer can strike mines at velocities of up to three meters per second.
That cannot be correct. A metre or meter is roughly a yard, so "three meters per second" is about 9 feet per second. By comparison, the bullet from a.45 acp, one of the slowest rounds fired from modern firearms, can do 1000 feet per second or more, and many rifle rounds will break 3000fps. Shooting mines is known to set them off, not to disarm them safely because of the high velocity of the bullet. "Three meters per second" is simply not high velocity, by any standard that would seem to fit the context.
This could be a typo, a translation error, or simply a case of information having been mangled by a reporter who didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but it definately does look like some incorrect information.
As to the moderation of the parent post... be looking for this joker on meta-mod folks. And if you have mod points today, bump it up a point or two please.
Or, a judge might rule that since RMS et al released their code into the wild, that the code is effectively public domain, because the effectively public domain release doesn't grant the right to restrict people's behavior without negotiating/signing specific license documents with individuals copying GPL'ed works.
One problem here, he hasn't "released his code into... public domain" anymore than, say, Steven King has released his novels into the public domain. Under the law the situation is the same - copyright applies to computer code the same way it applies to fiction prose. Publication, whether in a book or on a computer disk or over the internet, does not in any way prejudice that copyright. Simply letting people read your code (or your prose) does not in any way invalidate your copyright. You are correct that you cannot restrict people's behaviour with a contract which has not been negotiated/signed, however what you are missing here is that the GPL in no way imposes any restrictions to negotiate over. The things that the GPL prohibits are a small subset of the things that copyright law already prohibits. In other words, if you release your code with no license whatsoever those who receive it have more, not less, restrictions on what they can do with it than they do if they accept the GPL, and there is nothing which you can legally do with code released with no license whatsoever that you cannot do with software under the GPL.
I don't believe that this is the case, I'm just parroting what I've read elsewhere as being a concern.
Which just highlights the dangers of taking slashdot trolls seriously.:)
It's not unknown in the legal world for terms put on a contract or other document to be considered unenforceable due to other provisions of law.
Perfectly true. But the consequences would be nothing like what you are imagining. You must keep in mind that computer code, just like novels, is copyrighted by default and that the GPL does not add any restrictions over that default copyright status - it simply offers a license to do things that would otherwise be illegal (copying, modifying, redistributing.) Most software licenses attempt to restrict rights that copyright law allows. The GPL does not. This is a critical distinction.
I've bought at least 3 PCs that came with Microsoft Windows ME - an OS that I never ever used. Is this considered "installed" software?
Yes.
Although I never used it (Linux boxes all the way!) , it sure did come installed on the PC I purchased. And I sure didn't buy the Microsoft software on a CD... It was just preloaded on there.
Although this is fairly common, it's quite illegal. If they are selling the software with the computer, they need to include at the very least an authentic license agreement with the CD and number on it.
I have found that places that do this will quickly cough up a licensed copy of the software for you, just wait till you open the box, then call them back and tell them they must have made a mistake, you didn't get the CD. Once in awhile you have to let them know that you know how much trouble they can get in for "piracy" but they'll cough it right up then, if not before.
I have no use for ME either, but if I'm getting charged for the damn thing I sure as hell want to recieve it. Go to osauctions.com afterwards and make some of your money back, and help out someone that will actually use it at the same time.
Now, the real question is: can a COPYING file in a tar file count as a license, when the user doesn't need to sign a contract or indicate their affirmative agreement to the license terms in any way? This might get touched on by a revision of EULA practices, and the GPL might well be ruled to be a legally deficient mechanism. That would require some judge to decide that sharing of software must be either public domain or on some sort of contract basis, however, which seems unlikely to occur.
No, their is an affirmative action to indicate agreement with the license - copying and redistribution. You don't need a license to prohibit that - it is *automatically* forbidden to copy and redistribute a copyrighted work without explicit permission from the copyright owner. So if you copy a GPLd work like that, there are only two possibilities - either you have accepted the license, or you are infringing on the copyright.
Yes and no. It's certainly theft of chattel, and therefore actionable as a civil matter. No one's made a test case of it yet though, and as a practical matter, it probably won't happen. The sheer amount of detective work involved before you could even file - to prove that person x sent particular spam, amass a list of victims that will join the suit, and so forth, are rather prohibitive, particularly because it's so hard to prove that a particular person corresponds to a particular ip at a particular time, without police help.
It also seems to be a violation of the statute prohibiting junk faxes. Again, no test case yet. The politicians (AGs included) seem to be much too interested in new legislation, which gives them the opportunity for publicity (and for extorting "contributions" from spammers of course) to bother with that.
Frankly, I'm very deeply suspicious of any attempt to deal with spam via legislation. Any legislation is going to wind up immunizing spammers that make contributions to the politicians, by one sort of bullshit clause or another. The only real solution is going to be along the lines of what ORBS is doing.
It's not a "slashdoters definition" - it's The Open Source Definition - defined by the guys that made up the term and popularised it. One of the conditions for considering source truly Open is that the license does not discriminate against people in particular fields of endeavor - which means that "for non-commercial use only" is not Open.
They drive on the left, along with basically all former British colonies outside of North America.
It's an interesting little historical digression as to why different countries drive on the sides of the road they do. It actually all goes back to Napoleonic Europe. Before Napoleon, everyone used the left side of the road. It just sort of naturally happened that way, most people are right handed after all, and if that passer-by jumps at you as he goes by, you want your strong hand (which might well be holding a sword, after all) between you. Or if you were in a chariot, or on a horse, the weapon typically would be in the right hand, the reins in the left - which leads to the same thing. So for centuries everyone in europe used the left side of the road.
Then came Napoleon. And the Napoleonic wars. Horrid bloody confused battles, gunsmoke obscuring view, troops arriving late and needing to tell friend from foe quickly when they marched into view along a roadway. Plus Napoleon was a bit of an iconoclast anyway. So he came up with a way that his armies could quickly tell friend from foe, even under the most confused conditions. He decreed that the French would now use the right side of the road, not the left. Anyone marching on the left side of the road was the enemy. He conquered nation after nation, and when they were conquered, they switched sides and used the right side of the road.
The British were never conquered. They still use the left to this day. So do their former colonies (with the exceptions mentioned.)
Sweden also he did not conquer. However, back in the 1960s, the Swedes did finally change over to be compatible with the nations around them. They had some rather confused motorists for a bit, as you might imagine, but eventually everyone got used to it. Most other European nations that Napoleon didn't conquer (such as Switzerland, for instance) nevertheless made that adjustment long before, for the sake of commerce with their neighbors.
Ahh but now the strange exception in North America. We actually went through a period of relative chaos on this issue - most early Americans were from England after all, but then again, we fought the British and those French had helped us... so there was some disagreement and regional variation, although the right side was probably more popular, particularly early on. Henry Ford actually was the one that put an end to it. He had a bit of a fetish about efficiency - you may know that he only put out his cars in one colour, for instance, to simplify the painting stage of production, not to mention his supply logistics. So it was natural he would want to decide to put the steering wheel on one side or the other, not both (an option his competitors catered to.) He settled on the left, it is said, because his left arm was weak from a childhood illness and he found it difficult to shift gears with it. So he put the steering wheel on the left, shifted with his right, and his cars became so successful that the entire continent was soon driving on the left side of the road.
And I don't think it is misleading, since the news article specifically directs you to the license to get the exact terms of the source. It isn't like it is some big consipiracy to hide the terms of the license.
No, you're not trying to hide the terms of the license. But by describing it as "Open Source" you are lying. I won't ascribe motive, I don't really believe you had any motive other than the one you give, but nonetheless the effect of tolerating such untruths is not to hide the terms of licenses like yours, but rather to dilute and obscure the meaning of the term Open Source.
I've never played your game, but I think it's great that you're releasing the code, even under such a restrictive license. You are to be applauded for that act. But you are certainly not to be applauded for diluting or obscuring the meaning of the term you are misusing.
Allow me to, respectfully, suggest that you should correct the error forthwith. I might suggest "Myth Server Code Released" or something similar. There are plenty of headlines that will fit in that space and still be true - unfortunately the one that was chosen is not.
Ironically enough, the literal content of your post is correct. It's not true. The code is being released, but not, as the headline claims, as open source.
Microsoft Broad Source License
This License governs use of the accompanying
Bungie.net game server software (the "Software").
Microsoft hopes you find this Software useful.
You are granted a
non-exclusive license to do anything you want with the Software, including but
not limited to the right to make modifications to the Software, provided that
all use of the Software is for non-commercial purposes only.
In return, we simply require that you agree:
Not to remove any copyright notices from the Software.
That the Software comes "as is", with no warranties. None whatsoever. This means no implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or any warranty of non-infringement. Microsoft will provide no product support for
the Software. You must pass this
disclaimer on whenever you transfer the Software.
That we will not be liable for any of those types of damages known as indirect,
special, consequential, or incidental related to the Software or this License. You must pass this limitation
of liability on whenever you transfer the Software.
That if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software, your
license to the Software ends automatically (this applies even when the rest of
the License ends).
That the patent rights Microsoft is licensing only apply to the Software, not to any derivatives you make.
That your rights under the License end automatically if you breach this in any way.
By installing, copying,
downloading, accessing or otherwise using the Software, you agree to be bound
by the terms of this License.
We have a grocery chain where I used to live that did the exact same thing. I boycotted them for it, and made a point to explain to the management why. Probably didn't do any good, but if enough people did...
Think about it, this is really something you should be angry about. That lady in front of you didn't just save $4.63 out of thin air - YOU subsidised her "savings" as a penalty for refusing to be a good sheepling. Why would you even do business with a company that treated you like that? If you're going to pay extra anyway, why not pay extra to another store?
Well, not directly at least. This isn't mandating opt-in for spammers or anything like that. They're talking about sharing personal information. While this may include email addresses, it's MUCH more than that - addresses, buying habits, banking practices, assets, etc. Companies do this all the time, and set "opt-out" policies that generously allow you to tell them to quit sharing whenever you become aware of it, but by then the damage is usually done.
I'm a bit dubious of this case, because it wasn't legislated, a beaureacrat took it upon himself to re-interpret an existing law to say this, so the suit may well have a good point in this particular case. However, it's a great idea, a lot of states have legislation like that pending, and I am urging everyone to do something about this. See if your state has a bill like this pending - if it does, write your representatives and tell them you support it. If not, write them and encourage them to introduce one.
Without an ability to actually see the souce code you'd be in effect asking a government to put faith into a foreign commercial entity. Why should a (not corrupt) government even think of doing this?
Why would another business do this, for that matter?
In theory, it should work like this - the reputation of the provider would be extremely important. They would have to behave impeccably - a single "incident" could destroy that trust, and with it a large part of their market.
Microsoft obviously doesn't qualify by those standards, and yet they still survive. Why? Is the theory wrong here?
Microsoft uses marketing and counts on human laziness and ignorance to avoid this effect. But, they may well just be avoiding it temporarily. This may be just the beginning of the karma train for them, only time will tell.
You actually sound like a thinker, I find that cool. You might enjoy this link, it has quite an interesting argument Re: whether or not there ever was a historical Jesus behind the gospel stories.
I've tried to create a system like this on a couple of muds I've admin'd on over the years, but never found enough support from coders/builders/etc. to make it work. When it comes right down to it, most people seem to be more interested in hack-and-slash and "being über" than in a game like you're talking about.
Anyway, regarding the whole selling items and accounts thing, I've dealt with this on muds too, and seen how it works on EQ (played that for awhile.) There are two problems. The first is if you allow it, then it makes a mockery of the game really, for serious players at least... you work your way up from the bottom rung by hard work, and then run into clueless newbies that are 10 levels above you, far better equipped, and haven't a clue - that's very demoralising and ruins the illusion of the game. Not to mention that when different people play the same character they will not play him the same, and that again ruins one of the main illusions that makes the game fun.
On the other hand, it's very difficult to stop people from doing this. On a fairly small mud, you can at least keep it under control, even though it happens people that don't hide it fairly well will be caught, and frankly that's good enough - if the only people doing it are "cool" enough about it to avoid being caught it's really not a problem, because the illusions are not really threatened.
On the other hand, on a system with as many players as EverQuest it's absolutely impossible to even control. The best they can do is try to shut down the auction houses, but players do this on EQ very frequently and very openly, despite it being absolutely illegal. The ratio of players to admins is just too lopsided for any effective control to be possible.
A suggestion for DAoC - poll the playerbase. Ask them how they feel about this - is it ok? annoying? Or does it totally ruin the game? Then do a server split, with the numbers informed by the poll. Let people that want to do this play on servers where it's legal, but enforce the prohibition with maximum harshness on the others. It would be much easier to enforce there as well, since players would be much more likely to complain if they saw it happening.
Slashdot Mirror
It won't keep up with your cyrix on integer ops, but stick a heavy floating point app on that box and you'll get entirely different results.
So what you're saying is that you deliberately prevented their dialer from connecting you to a human being, and then blame them for dead air calls and say it's harrassment?
If you enjoy playing such a silly game, I guess that's your business, but if anyone was "harrassing" you it was you yourself.
It's an annoying POS. But seriously, just fill it out with bogus info and be done with it. Make sure you uncheck all the boxes that say you want to be spammed, and use uce@ftc.gov as your email address, so when they try to spam you anyway it saves you time reporting it...
Just how do they bully or harrass you?
Yeah, they aren't my favourite phone calls either, but calling it "bullying" or "harrassing" is either rhetorical extravagance or a revelation of a serious mental problem on your part. It's a freakin phone call. Harrassment is possible, but if they're seriously harrassing you there are ways to deal with that - and I've never even heard of that happening. What on earth would they have to gain? Harrassment doesn't get sales. And to bully you would require that they could actually do something to threaten you with, they can't, they're a voice on the other end of a phone, they can't hurt you.
I get telemarketer calls all the time. It usually goes like this. Pick up the phone, listen to spiel long enough to determine I am not interested (3-4 seconds) - interrupt and say "sorry, not interested, better luck next call" and hang up. Once in awhile someone actually calls with something I'm even interested in (promotional offer on something I'm thinking about buying already.) Either way, there's no bullying or harrassment. And, most importantly, they call on their dime. The trouble with spammers is they call on my dime. I would never buy anything from a spammer, even if they did have a good deal on something I wanted. If a telemarketer called with such an offer I'd have no problem with it though.
Google has to do a lot to process a page. It tries to analyze the content, it crossreferences complex networks of linking, building a very complicated database for searching.
A spammer-spider can be much more simple, and thus move much more quickly. All it is interested in are email addresses. Period.
This is silly. DOS is an acronym, standing for Disk Operating System. MS-DOS is just one of many DOSs that have existed over the years. Now PC-DOS was basically MS-DOS, but DR-DOS was an entirely independant codebase. (Well, not entirely, it was developed from CPM by Digital Research who actually owned CP/M, while MS-DOS is derived from a CP/M knockoff called QDOS, but the point is DR-DOS was not an MS-DOS derivative.) But that was hardly the first DOS by any means. AmigaDOS ring a bell? AppleDOS?
I believe the first OS to bear the name DOS actually ran on an ancient (pre-x86) IBM box, but I could be wrong. At any rate, there is no trademark infringement problem with the acronym DOS, it was in wide use well before MS-DOS came around.
I disagree. You are very much responsible. Now, granted, you can't be expected to actually administer those systems. If one of your sub-leased addresses winds up used by a spammer, that doesn't mean right off you've done anything wrong. But... if reasonable efforts are made to address the situation with the sub-leasee, and they aren't willing to deal with the situation, then it does become your responsibility.
If that was actually what happened, and you just said "not our problem" then you were as guilty as the spammers. Moreso really.
Well that's a rather odd way of looking at it. When I mean latest version, I'm including the .x... in this case it seems the latest version of IE 5.5 is 5.50.4807.2300. Hrmm you're right though, it does still have to be patched. Just found the bugger. All patched now. Grr. A lot of work for how often I use that POS.
Well it's been quite awhile since I've had IE 6 installed here, but I remember thinking it was ugly and cartoonish. Certainly all I have seen of it recently was on a friends machine that has MSN Explorer though, so you may be right I was conflating the two in my mind as I can't seem to remember what it actually looked like when I had 6 here, just that I disliked it.
Eventually I'm sure they will completely deprecate 5.5. Gah, hopefully I won't need a windows box anymore by then, I really hate to have to have that whole mess on my computer just to use windows update and read KB docs.
Ok so first answer is that it does affect 5.5 but not if I download the latest version?
And as to the second, have you *tried* 6 on a 98 or ME system? It does indeed look very different. Godawful ugly as Mozilla, and that's saying something.
Apparently you have actual followed this story, could you clarify something for me? Glancing through the page about it I got the impression this only concerns MSIE 6.x with MSN Messenger, correct? I ask because I normally use Opera for my windows box, but I do keep a copy of MSIE for the occasion when I really must access a mangled webpage (such as microsoft.com) - BUT I found MSIE 6 to be so aesthetically revolting I destroyed it utterly and went back to running the latest MSIE 5 instead. Sooo... basically I don't need to worry about this problem at all, right?
The parent comment is currently at (Score:0, Troll). It is not a troll, it is completely accurate.
From the article:
That cannot be correct. A metre or meter is roughly a yard, so "three meters per second" is about 9 feet per second. By comparison, the bullet from a .45 acp, one of the slowest rounds fired from modern firearms, can do 1000 feet per second or more, and many rifle rounds will break 3000fps. Shooting mines is known to set them off, not to disarm them safely because of the high velocity of the bullet. "Three meters per second" is simply not high velocity, by any standard that would seem to fit the context.
This could be a typo, a translation error, or simply a case of information having been mangled by a reporter who didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but it definately does look like some incorrect information.
As to the moderation of the parent post... be looking for this joker on meta-mod folks. And if you have mod points today, bump it up a point or two please.
You assume that patterns can be owned. A rather dubious assumption.
One problem here, he hasn't "released his code into... public domain" anymore than, say, Steven King has released his novels into the public domain. Under the law the situation is the same - copyright applies to computer code the same way it applies to fiction prose. Publication, whether in a book or on a computer disk or over the internet, does not in any way prejudice that copyright. Simply letting people read your code (or your prose) does not in any way invalidate your copyright. You are correct that you cannot restrict people's behaviour with a contract which has not been negotiated/signed, however what you are missing here is that the GPL in no way imposes any restrictions to negotiate over. The things that the GPL prohibits are a small subset of the things that copyright law already prohibits. In other words, if you release your code with no license whatsoever those who receive it have more, not less, restrictions on what they can do with it than they do if they accept the GPL, and there is nothing which you can legally do with code released with no license whatsoever that you cannot do with software under the GPL.
Which just highlights the dangers of taking slashdot trolls seriously. :)
Perfectly true. But the consequences would be nothing like what you are imagining. You must keep in mind that computer code, just like novels, is copyrighted by default and that the GPL does not add any restrictions over that default copyright status - it simply offers a license to do things that would otherwise be illegal (copying, modifying, redistributing.) Most software licenses attempt to restrict rights that copyright law allows. The GPL does not. This is a critical distinction.
Yes.
Although this is fairly common, it's quite illegal. If they are selling the software with the computer, they need to include at the very least an authentic license agreement with the CD and number on it.
I have found that places that do this will quickly cough up a licensed copy of the software for you, just wait till you open the box, then call them back and tell them they must have made a mistake, you didn't get the CD. Once in awhile you have to let them know that you know how much trouble they can get in for "piracy" but they'll cough it right up then, if not before.
I have no use for ME either, but if I'm getting charged for the damn thing I sure as hell want to recieve it. Go to osauctions.com afterwards and make some of your money back, and help out someone that will actually use it at the same time.
No, their is an affirmative action to indicate agreement with the license - copying and redistribution. You don't need a license to prohibit that - it is *automatically* forbidden to copy and redistribute a copyrighted work without explicit permission from the copyright owner. So if you copy a GPLd work like that, there are only two possibilities - either you have accepted the license, or you are infringing on the copyright.
Yes and no. It's certainly theft of chattel, and therefore actionable as a civil matter. No one's made a test case of it yet though, and as a practical matter, it probably won't happen. The sheer amount of detective work involved before you could even file - to prove that person x sent particular spam, amass a list of victims that will join the suit, and so forth, are rather prohibitive, particularly because it's so hard to prove that a particular person corresponds to a particular ip at a particular time, without police help.
It also seems to be a violation of the statute prohibiting junk faxes. Again, no test case yet. The politicians (AGs included) seem to be much too interested in new legislation, which gives them the opportunity for publicity (and for extorting "contributions" from spammers of course) to bother with that.
Frankly, I'm very deeply suspicious of any attempt to deal with spam via legislation. Any legislation is going to wind up immunizing spammers that make contributions to the politicians, by one sort of bullshit clause or another. The only real solution is going to be along the lines of what ORBS is doing.
It's not a "slashdoters definition" - it's The Open Source Definition - defined by the guys that made up the term and popularised it. One of the conditions for considering source truly Open is that the license does not discriminate against people in particular fields of endeavor - which means that "for non-commercial use only" is not Open.
They drive on the left, along with basically all former British colonies outside of North America.
It's an interesting little historical digression as to why different countries drive on the sides of the road they do. It actually all goes back to Napoleonic Europe. Before Napoleon, everyone used the left side of the road. It just sort of naturally happened that way, most people are right handed after all, and if that passer-by jumps at you as he goes by, you want your strong hand (which might well be holding a sword, after all) between you. Or if you were in a chariot, or on a horse, the weapon typically would be in the right hand, the reins in the left - which leads to the same thing. So for centuries everyone in europe used the left side of the road.
Then came Napoleon. And the Napoleonic wars. Horrid bloody confused battles, gunsmoke obscuring view, troops arriving late and needing to tell friend from foe quickly when they marched into view along a roadway. Plus Napoleon was a bit of an iconoclast anyway. So he came up with a way that his armies could quickly tell friend from foe, even under the most confused conditions. He decreed that the French would now use the right side of the road, not the left. Anyone marching on the left side of the road was the enemy. He conquered nation after nation, and when they were conquered, they switched sides and used the right side of the road.
The British were never conquered. They still use the left to this day. So do their former colonies (with the exceptions mentioned.)
Sweden also he did not conquer. However, back in the 1960s, the Swedes did finally change over to be compatible with the nations around them. They had some rather confused motorists for a bit, as you might imagine, but eventually everyone got used to it. Most other European nations that Napoleon didn't conquer (such as Switzerland, for instance) nevertheless made that adjustment long before, for the sake of commerce with their neighbors.
Ahh but now the strange exception in North America. We actually went through a period of relative chaos on this issue - most early Americans were from England after all, but then again, we fought the British and those French had helped us... so there was some disagreement and regional variation, although the right side was probably more popular, particularly early on. Henry Ford actually was the one that put an end to it. He had a bit of a fetish about efficiency - you may know that he only put out his cars in one colour, for instance, to simplify the painting stage of production, not to mention his supply logistics. So it was natural he would want to decide to put the steering wheel on one side or the other, not both (an option his competitors catered to.) He settled on the left, it is said, because his left arm was weak from a childhood illness and he found it difficult to shift gears with it. So he put the steering wheel on the left, shifted with his right, and his cars became so successful that the entire continent was soon driving on the left side of the road.
No, you're not trying to hide the terms of the license. But by describing it as "Open Source" you are lying. I won't ascribe motive, I don't really believe you had any motive other than the one you give, but nonetheless the effect of tolerating such untruths is not to hide the terms of licenses like yours, but rather to dilute and obscure the meaning of the term Open Source.
I've never played your game, but I think it's great that you're releasing the code, even under such a restrictive license. You are to be applauded for that act. But you are certainly not to be applauded for diluting or obscuring the meaning of the term you are misusing.
Allow me to, respectfully, suggest that you should correct the error forthwith. I might suggest "Myth Server Code Released" or something similar. There are plenty of headlines that will fit in that space and still be true - unfortunately the one that was chosen is not.
Ironically enough, the literal content of your post is correct. It's not true. The code is being released, but not, as the headline claims, as open source.
We have a grocery chain where I used to live that did the exact same thing. I boycotted them for it, and made a point to explain to the management why. Probably didn't do any good, but if enough people did...
Think about it, this is really something you should be angry about. That lady in front of you didn't just save $4.63 out of thin air - YOU subsidised her "savings" as a penalty for refusing to be a good sheepling. Why would you even do business with a company that treated you like that? If you're going to pay extra anyway, why not pay extra to another store?
Well, not directly at least. This isn't mandating opt-in for spammers or anything like that. They're talking about sharing personal information. While this may include email addresses, it's MUCH more than that - addresses, buying habits, banking practices, assets, etc. Companies do this all the time, and set "opt-out" policies that generously allow you to tell them to quit sharing whenever you become aware of it, but by then the damage is usually done.
I'm a bit dubious of this case, because it wasn't legislated, a beaureacrat took it upon himself to re-interpret an existing law to say this, so the suit may well have a good point in this particular case. However, it's a great idea, a lot of states have legislation like that pending, and I am urging everyone to do something about this. See if your state has a bill like this pending - if it does, write your representatives and tell them you support it. If not, write them and encourage them to introduce one.
Why would another business do this, for that matter?
In theory, it should work like this - the reputation of the provider would be extremely important. They would have to behave impeccably - a single "incident" could destroy that trust, and with it a large part of their market.
Microsoft obviously doesn't qualify by those standards, and yet they still survive. Why? Is the theory wrong here?
Microsoft uses marketing and counts on human laziness and ignorance to avoid this effect. But, they may well just be avoiding it temporarily. This may be just the beginning of the karma train for them, only time will tell.
You actually sound like a thinker, I find that cool. You might enjoy this link, it has quite an interesting argument Re: whether or not there ever was a historical Jesus behind the gospel stories.
I've tried to create a system like this on a couple of muds I've admin'd on over the years, but never found enough support from coders/builders/etc. to make it work. When it comes right down to it, most people seem to be more interested in hack-and-slash and "being über" than in a game like you're talking about.
Anyway, regarding the whole selling items and accounts thing, I've dealt with this on muds too, and seen how it works on EQ (played that for awhile.) There are two problems. The first is if you allow it, then it makes a mockery of the game really, for serious players at least... you work your way up from the bottom rung by hard work, and then run into clueless newbies that are 10 levels above you, far better equipped, and haven't a clue - that's very demoralising and ruins the illusion of the game. Not to mention that when different people play the same character they will not play him the same, and that again ruins one of the main illusions that makes the game fun.
On the other hand, it's very difficult to stop people from doing this. On a fairly small mud, you can at least keep it under control, even though it happens people that don't hide it fairly well will be caught, and frankly that's good enough - if the only people doing it are "cool" enough about it to avoid being caught it's really not a problem, because the illusions are not really threatened.
On the other hand, on a system with as many players as EverQuest it's absolutely impossible to even control. The best they can do is try to shut down the auction houses, but players do this on EQ very frequently and very openly, despite it being absolutely illegal. The ratio of players to admins is just too lopsided for any effective control to be possible.
A suggestion for DAoC - poll the playerbase. Ask them how they feel about this - is it ok? annoying? Or does it totally ruin the game? Then do a server split, with the numbers informed by the poll. Let people that want to do this play on servers where it's legal, but enforce the prohibition with maximum harshness on the others. It would be much easier to enforce there as well, since players would be much more likely to complain if they saw it happening.