And if that torrent is up for 3 months? At what point does guest become "resident"?
or a neighbor using your unsecured wireless signal.
My wireless is not unsecured.
Only in America does an IP address equal a person.
Nobody said it equalled a person. But it gets you close enough to a person often enough that you can't shove your head in your ass and pretend that your safe or immune from being looked at.
If someone is shot with a gun registered to you, that doesn't prove you pulled the trigger... maybe it was your house guest... or your neighbor borrowed it because you left the back porch door unlocked... so what? You can bet your ass they are going to take a good hard look at you anyway.
If the IP traces back to a verizon dsl modem, then its authoritative enough to know its either you or your mom. Just because there is some edge case out there doesn't change the fact that this CAN be used to sniff users out with high reliability a large percentage of the time.
But most of us, most of the time, are taking things home from stores before the stores have the money.
Any debt created in a transaction with credit and debit cards isn't between the buyer and the seller.
Cheques are a special case but hardly the usual one. Most places don't take cheques because of the risk. In any case, it hardly undermines my point that a typical store transaction is settled between the buyer and seller immediately... except when the buyer writes the seller a promissary note..:rollseyes:
Terminal velocity for a bullet is easily lethal (if it weren't, guns would be nonlethal weapons), as are velocities considerably lower than that for something of that size, shape, and mass.
A bullet fired straight up leaves the gun at 'muzzle velocity', which is as fast as its ever going to go, from there it slows down to zero at some height due to air resistance and gravity.
At that point, it falls back to earth. Where it will be accelerated by gravity minus air resistance. As it goes increasingly faster, air resistance goes up until its deceleration matches gravity's acceleration, and this is "terminal velocity" because it will fall the rest of the remaining distance at this speed.
Terminal velocity is probably much slower than muzzle velocity, so it will not hit the ground nearly as fast as it was travelling when it left the gun.
It may or may not be travelling at a lethal velocity.
Actually in most cases the buyer takes possession of the item first.
You haven't taken any sort of legal possession of the stuff in your shopping cart.
Even if it were the other way around there would be a debt, the store would owe me a debt in exchange for my cash.
Which they could satisfy by returning your cash. Or they can hand over the goods you are trying to buy instead.
In any case, there really is no debt. The transaction is settled without the creation of debt. The goods are presumed to have changed ownership at the time of the transaction. There is no silly 11 seconds of debt where you've paid them and they're waiting for your receipt to print and haven't pushed your bag over the counter to you yet.
The intention is and always was that cash could be used for transactions.
Actually no. The intention really was just with respect to actual debts, that you could always satisfy a bill collector with legal tender... he couldn't say no to federal currency and walk off with a few of your goats against your will.
It gaurantees that federally issued currency would be acceptable for debts.
It doesn't gaurantee that it would be acceptable for transactions. Its always been the case that if someone didn't want to use currency, that they could simply refuse to transact with you.
but taking a job based on what you look like - you should have known better, lady!
Except that's precisely what she wants. She wants to be judged by her looks for a job that depends on her looks. Her numerical age doesn't define how old she LOOKS.
LotR really is just one big story, and only a halfwit would pick up The Two Towers and read it on its own, but the Silmarillion -- i can't really imagine someone wanting to read it without having read LotR,.. but it is a virtually completely standalone work.
Meanwhile I read Robots of Dawn years before I found a copy of The Caves of Steel, and reading them out of order is no real issue... they really are stand alone works.
Ender's game as a singleton makes sense; I read speaker for the dead and xenocide, and although i enjoyed them they weren't nearly as magical for me. And I don't even have any real interest in reading Cards other trips back to that well. Starts to feel like butter scraped over too much bread.
THHGTTG early novels are mostly better than the later ones.
I've read Dune, but not the later novels - so I can't comment on that one. But I've heard from some people that the first Dune book is better than the series.
Sci-Fi and fantasy have a tendancy to serialize, and i think far too much modern work is designed as some epic career spanning project. To the real detriment of the work.
Yes, but you gain on the infinite height of a tab ending at the top of the screen.
Only when the window is maximized, and you aren't running OSX...
you have to only aim in the X axis and move the cursor up, instead of having to aim at a small area in XY, which is demonstrably harder and more time consuming.
Even chrome maximized on windows... the top pixel or two aren't part of the tab, so you have to bring it back down a couple pixels. The amount of effort between that, and moving it down enough to get into the address bar is inconsequential.
Doubly so since I pretty much never run a browser full screen on my 21" multi-monitor desktop, and only occasionally on my 13" laptop...and its a mac so we're back to OSX menu bar there.
so the target size is effectively infinite. No bad UI about that.
That would be true if the menu bar were the target. But typically we target menu ITEMS.
It also fails to account for the fact that AFTER we use a menu item, we tend to want to put the cursor somewhere in the application window we were using... which if on a different monitor in a 2 large monitor system is a small target a VERY long way away. And we wouldn't have to make that trip if we hadn't had to go up to the menu bar.
Trying to suggest suggest the OSX menu bar is a good application of interface design using fitte's law in a multi-monitor setup is like concluding the best place to put the ketchup on a large picnic table would be at the bottom of a steep slide attached to the picnic table that ends in a brick wall.
Anyone who wants the ketchup can just run down the slid at full tilt into the brick wall... its pure genius.
I bet you can say that as fast as any other sentence, but typing it will require you to look up a character or two unless you type international stuff a lot.
Now, dictate a letter. You think anything short of a human being currently could possibly punctuate it correctly, filter out any thing that wasn't intended for the letter...
The reason typing is faster than dictation is that I can type exactly what I want. And if I decide to revise it the user interface is ideal for that. Copy/paste, select, delete... try doing that with something dictated.
Your particular example is pretty cherry picked too...
"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here. Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread."
"Well, you wouldn't a ben here 'f it hadn't a ben for Jim. You'd a ben down dah in de woods widout any dinner, en gittn' mos' drownded, too; dat you would, honey. Chickens knows when it's gwyne to rain, en so do de birds, chile."
Care to dictate that faster than I can type it and expect anyone to get the intended spelling, and punctuation in the ballpark? Cherry picking goes both ways.
it gives them a way to come back from a *dead* drive ( the most likely scenario ) and it gives them something to hold in their hands that will if nothing else make them feel like you care.
The most likely scenario is a nasty virus/malware infection. Many people would rather just re-pave the hard drive than try and clean it and gamble they were successful.
A physical disk never seems to be around when you need it, and half the time gets scratched or corrupted by the time you need it.
If it is harassment or stalking, etc, it already is illegal. It doesn't mysteriously become legal because a computer was involved.
Or does it? Legal terms have legal definitions. And just because you are comfortable extending the metaphor of harrassment or bullying from face to face intimidation at school to messages on a web site forum... that doesn't mean the legal definitions are so flexible.
That said, I agree we don't need new laws. I never said otherwise. But perhaps existing laws need to be updated to ensure the definitions are current and that they apply to modern situations.
YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM
Am I really? And how are YOU part of the solution?
Sexual assault is a part of life. It's GOING to happen. It sucks, but that's how it is. The correct solution is for adults to help people learn how to deal with it, not find ways to make it illegal.
Right? Why not?
Cyberbullying is not exercising your right to call Tommy a jerk online. Its systematic harassment bordering if not jumping off into full on psychological torture.
It should be illegal along with all other forms of harassment, stalking, and so forth.
It doesn't have the ability to play Blu-Ray because Apple said "no way" to all the DRM nonsense they'd have to build in to make a "trusted video path".
And then pretty much built it anyway to support iTunes HD.
And how is Psystar selling OS X on non-Apple computers not "redistribution"?
Back up a second: If they bought sealed boxes of OSX, and then resold them unopened, would they need a license from the copyright holder? No.
That sort of reselling is perfectly fine. Because you aren't making copies. You bought X units, and you resold X units. No problem.
Buying a sealed box of X, installing it on a PC, and then selling the box, along with the PC should be legal. The for-use copy on the PC is specifically allowed by copyright even without an explicit license to make that copy. And then selling the PC along with the original does no harm to the rights holder and really doesn't violate them under copyright. That is what Pystar was attempting to do. And really, it SHOULD be legal.
If you modify and redistribute without source code, are you not guilty of violating the GPL and copyright laws?
1) Remember simply re-selling the original you purchased is NOT the same as making and distributing copies.
2) Its "or" not "and". Either you accepted the GPL and then violated it by redistributing without source. OR you rejected the GPL and are violating copyright for redistributing without a license.
One OR the other. Not both.
Redistribution as-is is still allowed by copyright law.
No. You cannot make and distribute copies. Even exact copies. You need a license to do that.
You can however buy a copy, and then resell that copy.
Through the use of the GPL, Linus et al, has allowed anyone to do so with restrictions.
Copyright says you can't distribute copies AT ALL without a license.
The GPL is a license to distribute with certain terms, should you accept them. If you reject them you can still use and modify the software. You just can't redistribute copies.
You mean besides losing the right to control works which the law says is theirs?
When you sell a copy, you don't have rights to control that copy. Copyright gives rights holders specific limited rights over broadcasting, performance, and making copies, etc.
It doesn't give the rights holder carte blanche to tell people what they can and can't do. If I buy a book, the rights holder can't tell me where I read it. They can't tell me I'm not allowed to use a highlighter on it. They can't tell me I'm not allowed to burn it.
You do know that OEMs are covered in their modifications because their OEM licenses explicitly detail what they can do right?
I'm not talking about OEMs. I'm talking about mom and pops building whitebox PCs. They don't have an OEM agreement, and they don't need one. They buy stuff at wholesale, assemble it, and resell it. Its not illegal.
Besides the fact derivative works are under the sole control of copyright holder?
Nope. I can buy a CD, and remix it to my hearts content. the right's holder can't say squat.
Furthermore, even the redistribution isn't under their sole control. Its under our joint control. I can't release copies without their permission, but they can't distribute it either without mine.
Now, personally, I think I should be allowed to sell the remix album provided each unit of the remix album is bundled with an original CD contain the songs remixed. As the rights holder of the original song cannot possibly claim they were damaged if they are compensated in full for the original for EVERY SINGLE copy of the derivatave work. Franky, I'd like to see that one end up in court... because its against the letter of the law, but not against the spirit of the law, and I'm very curious what damages the rights holder would argue they suffered.
But that's beside the point, making an "insallation" copy is allowed by copyright. You don't need a license for that. And calling the nominal "changes" required to get OSX to work on a vanilla PC an infringing derivative work is an abuse of copyright law.
Next up Wired magazine will sue the post office for folding a magazine in half to get it into my mailbox. The original magazine is flat they'll argue... by folding it in half to make it fit, you made it into an unauthorized derivative work and then you distributed it.... and we at wired magazine have been materially harmed to the order of millions of dollars.
So if you decided to sell your car, it's okay for your friends to take your car without your permission and sell it, right?
If I decided to sell the car. They bought the car. Then yes, at that point, they can do whatever they want with it.
See CleanFlicks.
Glad you brought up cleanflicks, because that's actually an interesting case on a number of points.
The main area it failed in my opinion was by making a copy of the DVD, that was edited. Unlike the installation copy of software which is protected by copyright provisions that allow you to make a copy for installation purposes, the edited DVD was not protected in the same way.
The interesting solution to cleanflicks is "clearplay" where an unedited original is provided, and then a "template" is applied by a custom DVD player that mutes and skips past the "unwanted" content.
And the clearpay solution fits the Apple situation quite appropriately. The original unedited OSX disc is provided, and the installation copy (which doesnt need permission from the rights holders) is modified to work the way the end user wants it to.
What if Pystar had simply sold an empty PC, a copy of OSX, and a customized installer that did the system prep, installed the unedited OSX, and then updated it with the requisite patches all on the customers premises?
Would that be entirely fine then? I think it would have been.
So, from there, to shutting them down, because they did it at their office instead of at your house? That seems like an abuse of the law, not a just application of it.
Examples of what's missing please. Other than the already mentioned category of games.
Really? You are seriously asking for examples of what's missing on a Mac?
Vertically integrated Point of sale systems in a given industry... from iqMetrix for Cellular to VisualEyes for Opticians to Pro-Repair for Repair shops. Not to mention accounting software. CRM/Business Intelligence. Or shipping management. Then there is RFID tracking systems for warehouse managment. FleetTracking and Asset Tracking systems...
Utility software for programming two way radios. Utility software to update firmware on Samsung cell phones.
Then there is battery analyzer software. (e.g. Cadex Battery Shop) Medical instrument software (e.g. Medmont Studio medmont.com), Mobile Customer Experience (mce-sys.com), computer controlled lathes (dac-intl.com),
Hell more of this stuff is available for linux than OSX.
Even plug ins for Microsoft Office - sure Office itself is cross platform, but statistical-analysis packages, report writers, etc, require windows and the windows version.
Why are you acting like I was attacking Windows in some way?
Because by saying: "yup, sounds like he's doing work" implies OSX's only software weakness is games, and that the average "business" can use OSX just fine...
Those of us concerned with privacy are worried by the likes of a company continually selling their lists off to any business that wants it.
That is in fact precisely the issue here.
Its not that B&N another book store acquired the lists from Borders through the bankruptcy.
Its specifically that B&N asserted that they shouldn't be bound by Borders privacy policy.
ie. B&N essentially started out by specifically asserting that it is in fact free to continually sell of the lists to any business that wants it. You know, that thing you said reasonable people concerned with privacy might get upset about?? Guess what, that's why they are upset.
Then yes you would be guilty and if the copyright holder ever found out you could be sued.
1) Because that damaged the copyright holder how?
2) Because "modifying" an OS to run on computers it was not intended amounts to adding some drivers / kernel extensions, etc.
By that logic, every copy of windows gets "heavily modified" during installation, as 3rd party drivers get added etc. Or should a PC vendor have to get a derivative works license fro Microsoft in order to replace the "Standard VGA" microsoft drivers with the latest ones from nvidia. Do you really want to argue that the installed copy is now an unauthorized derivative work?
3) And even if it was a "derivative work", the copyright holder still got paid for EACH original. Where do they get harmed?
But you cannot buy a copy of Windows, install it on 1000 computers, and then sell those to 1000 different users.
They bought 1000 comies, and included one copy with each computer.
That. Is. Copyright. Infringement.
If it is, that's one more thing that is WRONG with copyright.
Odds are Apple wouldn't have been able to sue for copyright infringement _IF_ the versions of OSX on the systems had each been bought and paid for. They weren't, however. They were copies made from a single copy.
That's splitting hairs. Yes the copies on each computer were made from a single copy. However, 1000 copies were purchased, and one copy was included with each computer.
What was the damage to Apple? Does it really matter WHICH of the 1000 identical install discs was used on a partcular computer? OSX doesn't even have an install key, so it makes absolutely no fucking difference whether they open 1000 boxes and use each one once or open one box and use it a 1000 times. As long as 1000 copies were purchased (and they were), and as long 1 copy was included with each computer (and one was) then its absurd to argue that the copyright holders rights were violated or that he was damaged.
No it does not. It gives you the right to RETURN the software if you decide you don't agree with it's license. It does NOT give you the right to IGNORE the license.
Actually, that is exactly what it does.
Or do you have a citation to an actual law that requires you to agree to a license agreement or return a product -after- the vendor took your money and let you go home with the product?
Slashdot Mirror
or a guest at your home
And if that torrent is up for 3 months? At what point does guest become "resident"?
or a neighbor using your unsecured wireless signal.
My wireless is not unsecured.
Only in America does an IP address equal a person.
Nobody said it equalled a person. But it gets you close enough to a person often enough that you can't shove your head in your ass and pretend that your safe or immune from being looked at.
If someone is shot with a gun registered to you, that doesn't prove you pulled the trigger ... maybe it was your house guest... or your neighbor borrowed it because you left the back porch door unlocked... so what? You can bet your ass they are going to take a good hard look at you anyway.
If the IP traces back to a verizon dsl modem, then its authoritative enough to know its either you or your mom. Just because there is some edge case out there doesn't change the fact that this CAN be used to sniff users out with high reliability a large percentage of the time.
But most of us, most of the time, are taking things home from stores before the stores have the money.
Any debt created in a transaction with credit and debit cards isn't between the buyer and the seller.
Cheques are a special case but hardly the usual one. Most places don't take cheques because of the risk. In any case, it hardly undermines my point that a typical store transaction is settled between the buyer and seller immediately ... except when the buyer writes the seller a promissary note.. :rollseyes:
If store owners had the right to reject cash for their payments, then they could disallow all Japanese from buying things from their store
No. That would be discrimination against Japanese, not cash. Discrimination against race is illegal. Discrimination against cash isn't.
None of those are really relevant to the topic at hand.
I'm not sure why you brought them up, not sure why you asserted I'd never used them? And not sure why you assumed I didn't know how they worked.
Are you just trolling?
Terminal velocity for a bullet is easily lethal (if it weren't, guns would be nonlethal weapons), as are velocities considerably lower than that for something of that size, shape, and mass.
A bullet fired straight up leaves the gun at 'muzzle velocity', which is as fast as its ever going to go, from there it slows down to zero at some height due to air resistance and gravity.
At that point, it falls back to earth. Where it will be accelerated by gravity minus air resistance. As it goes increasingly faster, air resistance goes up until its deceleration matches gravity's acceleration, and this is "terminal velocity" because it will fall the rest of the remaining distance at this speed.
Terminal velocity is probably much slower than muzzle velocity, so it will not hit the ground nearly as fast as it was travelling when it left the gun.
It may or may not be travelling at a lethal velocity.
Actually in most cases the buyer takes possession of the item first.
You haven't taken any sort of legal possession of the stuff in your shopping cart.
Even if it were the other way around there would be a debt, the store would owe me a debt in exchange for my cash.
Which they could satisfy by returning your cash.
Or they can hand over the goods you are trying to buy instead.
In any case, there really is no debt. The transaction is settled without the creation of debt. The goods are presumed to have changed ownership at the time of the transaction. There is no silly 11 seconds of debt where you've paid them and they're waiting for your receipt to print and haven't pushed your bag over the counter to you yet.
The intention is and always was that cash could be used for transactions.
Actually no. The intention really was just with respect to actual debts, that you could always satisfy a bill collector with legal tender... he couldn't say no to federal currency and walk off with a few of your goats against your will.
It gaurantees that federally issued currency would be acceptable for debts.
It doesn't gaurantee that it would be acceptable for transactions. Its always been the case that if someone didn't want to use currency, that they could simply refuse to transact with you.
but taking a job based on what you look like - you should have known better, lady!
Except that's precisely what she wants. She wants to be judged by her looks for a job that depends on her looks. Her numerical age doesn't define how old she LOOKS.
Maybe that's on purpose.
LotR really is just one big story, and only a halfwit would pick up The Two Towers and read it on its own, but the Silmarillion -- i can't really imagine someone wanting to read it without having read LotR,.. but it is a virtually completely standalone work.
Meanwhile I read Robots of Dawn years before I found a copy of The Caves of Steel, and reading them out of order is no real issue... they really are stand alone works.
Ender's game as a singleton makes sense; I read speaker for the dead and xenocide, and although i enjoyed them they weren't nearly as magical for me. And I don't even have any real interest in reading Cards other trips back to that well. Starts to feel like butter scraped over too much bread.
THHGTTG early novels are mostly better than the later ones.
I've read Dune, but not the later novels - so I can't comment on that one. But I've heard from some people that the first Dune book is better than the series.
Sci-Fi and fantasy have a tendancy to serialize, and i think far too much modern work is designed as some epic career spanning project. To the real detriment of the work.
Yes, but you gain on the infinite height of a tab ending at the top of the screen.
Only when the window is maximized, and you aren't running OSX...
you have to only aim in the X axis and move the cursor up, instead of having to aim at a small area in XY, which is demonstrably harder and more time consuming.
Even chrome maximized on windows... the top pixel or two aren't part of the tab, so you have to bring it back down a couple pixels. The amount of effort between that, and moving it down enough to get into the address bar is inconsequential.
Doubly so since I pretty much never run a browser full screen on my 21" multi-monitor desktop, and only occasionally on my 13" laptop...and its a mac so we're back to OSX menu bar there.
so the target size is effectively infinite. No bad UI about that.
That would be true if the menu bar were the target. But typically we target menu ITEMS.
It also fails to account for the fact that AFTER we use a menu item, we tend to want to put the cursor somewhere in the application window we were using... which if on a different monitor in a 2 large monitor system is a small target a VERY long way away. And we wouldn't have to make that trip if we hadn't had to go up to the menu bar.
Trying to suggest suggest the OSX menu bar is a good application of interface design using fitte's law in a multi-monitor setup is like concluding the best place to put the ketchup on a large picnic table would be at the bottom of a steep slide attached to the picnic table that ends in a brick wall.
Anyone who wants the ketchup can just run down the slid at full tilt into the brick wall... its pure genius.
I bet you can say that as fast as any other sentence, but typing it will require you to look up a character or two unless you type international stuff a lot.
Now, dictate a letter. You think anything short of a human being currently could possibly punctuate it correctly, filter out any thing that wasn't intended for the letter...
The reason typing is faster than dictation is that I can type exactly what I want. And if I decide to revise it the user interface is ideal for that. Copy/paste, select, delete... try doing that with something dictated.
Your particular example is pretty cherry picked too...
Care to dictate that faster than I can type it and expect anyone to get the intended spelling, and punctuation in the ballpark? Cherry picking goes both ways.
it gives them a way to come back from a *dead* drive ( the most likely scenario ) and it gives them something to hold in their hands that will if nothing else make them feel like you care.
The most likely scenario is a nasty virus/malware infection. Many people would rather just re-pave the hard drive than try and clean it and gamble they were successful.
A physical disk never seems to be around when you need it, and half the time gets scratched or corrupted by the time you need it.
If it is harassment or stalking, etc, it already is illegal. It doesn't mysteriously become legal because a computer was involved.
Or does it? Legal terms have legal definitions. And just because you are comfortable extending the metaphor of harrassment or bullying from face to face intimidation at school to messages on a web site forum... that doesn't mean the legal definitions are so flexible.
That said, I agree we don't need new laws. I never said otherwise. But perhaps existing laws need to be updated to ensure the definitions are current and that they apply to modern situations.
YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM
Am I really? And how are YOU part of the solution?
Sign up now, spaces are limited!
Spaces may be limited, but there is no fear you'll ever run out. :p
Sexual assault is a part of life. It's GOING to happen. It sucks, but that's how it is. The correct solution is for adults to help people learn how to deal with it, not find ways to make it illegal.
Right? Why not?
Cyberbullying is not exercising your right to call Tommy a jerk online. Its systematic harassment bordering if not jumping off into full on psychological torture.
It should be illegal along with all other forms of harassment, stalking, and so forth.
It doesn't have the ability to play Blu-Ray because Apple said "no way" to all the DRM nonsense they'd have to build in to make a "trusted video path".
And then pretty much built it anyway to support iTunes HD.
And how is Psystar selling OS X on non-Apple computers not "redistribution"?
Back up a second: If they bought sealed boxes of OSX, and then resold them unopened, would they need a license from the copyright holder? No.
That sort of reselling is perfectly fine. Because you aren't making copies. You bought X units, and you resold X units. No problem.
Buying a sealed box of X, installing it on a PC, and then selling the box, along with the PC should be legal. The for-use copy on the PC is specifically allowed by copyright even without an explicit license to make that copy. And then selling the PC along with the original does no harm to the rights holder and really doesn't violate them under copyright. That is what Pystar was attempting to do. And really, it SHOULD be legal.
If you modify and redistribute without source code, are you not guilty of violating the GPL and copyright laws?
1) Remember simply re-selling the original you purchased is NOT the same as making and distributing copies.
2) Its "or" not "and". Either you accepted the GPL and then violated it by redistributing without source. OR you rejected the GPL and are violating copyright for redistributing without a license.
One OR the other. Not both.
Redistribution as-is is still allowed by copyright law.
No. You cannot make and distribute copies. Even exact copies. You need a license to do that.
You can however buy a copy, and then resell that copy.
Through the use of the GPL, Linus et al, has allowed anyone to do so with restrictions.
Copyright says you can't distribute copies AT ALL without a license.
The GPL is a license to distribute with certain terms, should you accept them. If you reject them you can still use and modify the software. You just can't redistribute copies.
You mean besides losing the right to control works which the law says is theirs?
When you sell a copy, you don't have rights to control that copy. Copyright gives rights holders specific limited rights over broadcasting, performance, and making copies, etc.
It doesn't give the rights holder carte blanche to tell people what they can and can't do. If I buy a book, the rights holder can't tell me where I read it. They can't tell me I'm not allowed to use a highlighter on it. They can't tell me I'm not allowed to burn it.
You do know that OEMs are covered in their modifications because their OEM licenses explicitly detail what they can do right?
I'm not talking about OEMs. I'm talking about mom and pops building whitebox PCs. They don't have an OEM agreement, and they don't need one. They buy stuff at wholesale, assemble it, and resell it. Its not illegal.
Besides the fact derivative works are under the sole control of copyright holder?
Nope. I can buy a CD, and remix it to my hearts content. the right's holder can't say squat.
Furthermore, even the redistribution isn't under their sole control. Its under our joint control. I can't release copies without their permission, but they can't distribute it either without mine.
Now, personally, I think I should be allowed to sell the remix album provided each unit of the remix album is bundled with an original CD contain the songs remixed. As the rights holder of the original song cannot possibly claim they were damaged if they are compensated in full for the original for EVERY SINGLE copy of the derivatave work. Franky, I'd like to see that one end up in court... because its against the letter of the law, but not against the spirit of the law, and I'm very curious what damages the rights holder would argue they suffered.
But that's beside the point, making an "insallation" copy is allowed by copyright. You don't need a license for that. And calling the nominal "changes" required to get OSX to work on a vanilla PC an infringing derivative work is an abuse of copyright law.
Next up Wired magazine will sue the post office for folding a magazine in half to get it into my mailbox. The original magazine is flat they'll argue... by folding it in half to make it fit, you made it into an unauthorized derivative work and then you distributed it.... and we at wired magazine have been materially harmed to the order of millions of dollars.
So if you decided to sell your car, it's okay for your friends to take your car without your permission and sell it, right?
If I decided to sell the car. They bought the car. Then yes, at that point, they can do whatever they want with it.
See CleanFlicks.
Glad you brought up cleanflicks, because that's actually an interesting case on a number of points.
The main area it failed in my opinion was by making a copy of the DVD, that was edited. Unlike the installation copy of software which is protected by copyright provisions that allow you to make a copy for installation purposes, the edited DVD was not protected in the same way.
The interesting solution to cleanflicks is "clearplay" where an unedited original is provided, and then a "template" is applied by a custom DVD player that mutes and skips past the "unwanted" content.
http://www.clearplay.com/
And the clearpay solution fits the Apple situation quite appropriately. The original unedited OSX disc is provided, and the installation copy (which doesnt need permission from the rights holders) is modified to work the way the end user wants it to.
What if Pystar had simply sold an empty PC, a copy of OSX, and a customized installer that did the system prep, installed the unedited OSX, and then updated it with the requisite patches all on the customers premises?
Would that be entirely fine then? I think it would have been.
So, from there, to shutting them down, because they did it at their office instead of at your house? That seems like an abuse of the law, not a just application of it.
Examples of what's missing please. Other than the already mentioned category of games.
Really? You are seriously asking for examples of what's missing on a Mac?
Vertically integrated Point of sale systems in a given industry... from iqMetrix for Cellular to VisualEyes for Opticians to Pro-Repair for Repair shops. Not to mention accounting software. CRM/Business Intelligence. Or shipping management. Then there is RFID tracking systems for warehouse managment. FleetTracking and Asset Tracking systems...
Utility software for programming two way radios. Utility software to update firmware on Samsung cell phones.
Then there is battery analyzer software. (e.g. Cadex Battery Shop) Medical instrument software (e.g. Medmont Studio medmont.com), Mobile Customer Experience (mce-sys.com), computer controlled lathes (dac-intl.com),
Then there's CAD stuff... Catia, AutoDesk... fluid modelling software Flow-3D (flow3d.com)...
Hell more of this stuff is available for linux than OSX.
Even plug ins for Microsoft Office - sure Office itself is cross platform, but statistical-analysis packages, report writers, etc, require windows and the windows version.
Why are you acting like I was attacking Windows in some way?
Because by saying: "yup, sounds like he's doing work" implies OSX's only software weakness is games, and that the average "business" can use OSX just fine...
Those of us concerned with privacy are worried by the likes of a company continually selling their lists off to any business that wants it.
That is in fact precisely the issue here.
Its not that B&N another book store acquired the lists from Borders through the bankruptcy.
Its specifically that B&N asserted that they shouldn't be bound by Borders privacy policy.
ie. B&N essentially started out by specifically asserting that it is in fact free to continually sell of the lists to any business that wants it. You know, that thing you said reasonable people concerned with privacy might get upset about?? Guess what, that's why they are upset.
Then yes you would be guilty and if the copyright holder ever found out you could be sued.
1) Because that damaged the copyright holder how?
2) Because "modifying" an OS to run on computers it was not intended amounts to adding some drivers / kernel extensions, etc.
By that logic, every copy of windows gets "heavily modified" during installation, as 3rd party drivers get added etc. Or should a PC vendor have to get a derivative works license fro Microsoft in order to replace the "Standard VGA" microsoft drivers with the latest ones from nvidia. Do you really want to argue that the installed copy is now an unauthorized derivative work?
3) And even if it was a "derivative work", the copyright holder still got paid for EACH original. Where do they get harmed?
But you cannot buy a copy of Windows, install it on 1000 computers, and then sell those to 1000 different users.
They bought 1000 comies, and included one copy with each computer.
That. Is. Copyright. Infringement.
If it is, that's one more thing that is WRONG with copyright.
Odds are Apple wouldn't have been able to sue for copyright infringement _IF_ the versions of OSX on the systems had each been bought and paid for. They weren't, however. They were copies made from a single copy.
That's splitting hairs. Yes the copies on each computer were made from a single copy. However, 1000 copies were purchased, and one copy was included with each computer.
What was the damage to Apple? Does it really matter WHICH of the 1000 identical install discs was used on a partcular computer? OSX doesn't even have an install key, so it makes absolutely no fucking difference whether they open 1000 boxes and use each one once or open one box and use it a 1000 times. As long as 1000 copies were purchased (and they were), and as long 1 copy was included with each computer (and one was) then its absurd to argue that the copyright holders rights were violated or that he was damaged.
Really, is it that hard to understand?
You tell me.
No it does not. It gives you the right to RETURN the software if you decide you don't agree with it's license. It does NOT give you the right to IGNORE the license.
Actually, that is exactly what it does.
Or do you have a citation to an actual law that requires you to agree to a license agreement or return a product -after- the vendor took your money and let you go home with the product?