Java and avoiding software piracy?

[nebulous99]

The USPO may be broken, but the rest aren't. There are no software
patents in the EU despite US pressure.

Er, almost. They snuck some in through the back door, I think by
making patents for a "gadget" that consists simply of a computer
running particular software. Anyone actually running similar software
on a computer and using it for whatever such software is for infringes
these patents, even if technically it's not a patent on the software
itself.

 

[Hunter Gratzner]

Who are you talking about? Nobody in this thread is posting under that
name or any name even resembling it.

I am talking to you, Paul D. The regular repetitions of your hissy
fits are getting boring. And please spare us the death threat this
time.

 

[Joe Attardi]

Actually it's simply appropriate. Since you only ever post to this
newsgroup to flame someone named Twisted and never to actually discuss
Java programming or to do anything else for that matter

http://groups.google.com/group/comp...c23e160b20e/965e10b476ac3f5c#965e10b476ac3f5c
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...8f1542ba508/29459d5d0ad3b76f#29459d5d0ad3b76f
http://groups.google.com/group/comp...835e2d4059c/304e82ec7d3c53e8#304e82ec7d3c53e8

Wrong again!

 

[Joe Attardi]

Well, if he has hacked Google or someplace to block the sending of
news messages with specific content (say, a paragraph from his own
post to block any reply quoting that paragraph and thereby attempt by
cheating to have the last word) then that violates the Computer Fraud
and Abuse Act. Kevin Mitnick was sentenced to jail and afterward a
long period with a court ordered ban on network access for computer
hacking. So it isn't hard to see how Oliver could suffer the same fate
if indeed he is the guilty party.

And... exactly what proof do you have of this? Oh, right, you don't,
all you have is your tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist ramblings. Carry
on.

Let's see. I threaten to knock out an as-yet-not-positively-identified
hacker's net access. Subsequently a judge hands down a court order
barring the hacker (now a convicted defendant) from use of the net for
a very long time. Would the police then think that I somehow hacked
his net access because he no longer had any? Somehow I doubt it.

I misunderstood you, then. I thought you were threatening to somehow
"hack" his net access. At least that is feasible. Threatening legal
action because you suspect foul play in Google Groups is hardly a
threat that carries any weight.

 

[Joe Attardi]

I refuse. I had higher quality Usenet access at my existing level of
payment before. I will not start paying extra for what I used to have
for what I'm paying now, when there is no justification for paying
extra (costs have gone down, not up).

I'm not sure what you want from us, then. None of us control the
Google Groups infrastructure, so your complaints about it here will
fall on deaf ears. Nobody cares, nor do we have the power to fix
whatever problems you are having. If you are too dense to just join
the group suggested to you earlier and post your problems in there,
nobody wants to hear it.

No, Your Royal Highness. Yeah, I know, high treason, yadda yadda
yadda. If you're really the Emperor of Usenet you should be able to
enforce your Royal Decrees from On High. I strongly suspect you cannot
in fact do so.

Huh?? I'm only saying to stop bitching because it's not going to get
you anywhere, plus it speaks volumes about your maturity. Of course,
you've already demonstrated your mature nature by altering the
spellings of people's last names, a very elementary school aged
tactic. Good job, you have demonstrated your superior wit. Or at least
half of it...

 

[Patricia Shanahan]

Lew wrote:
....

Oliver did nothing to you. The problems you note with GG are universal
- how many posts in clj.programmer have appeared repeatedly (including
your own about which you paranoidly bitched) because the numb-nuts who
use it aren't patient enough to wait for their post to appear, instead
egocentrically repost and repost and repost thinking we want to read
their stuff again and again and again. You take it a step further with
your paranoid blame game - no one is trying to censor you. Grow up and
get over yourself.

I don't think most people repost because they think we want to read the
message multiple times. They repost because they simply don't know that
messages can be delayed in appearing at a given host without being lost
to Usenet as a whole.

Patricia

 

[~kurt]

On Jul 21, 6:48 pm, ~kurt <[email protected]> wrote:

And they would probably make just as much if people could freely clone
their product. Some of them actually do (let people freely clone their
product, and make just as much).

I very much doubt it. It would be interesting to see how sales of books
like "Thinking in Java" (I think that is the one that is free for download)
compares to, say, "Core Java", and other popular books.

And the vast majority of copyright royalty money goes to people that
are rich already, not to poor starving artists and inventors or
whatever ailed them in the version of the fairy tale you were told.

Ah, I see the problem here. You are one of these people who is jealous
of rich people. Anything that benefits them, is bad.

Sure, a book publisher gets most of the money. But the author does just
fine. And a really popular author makes boatloads of money.

There are plenty of starving artists because their skills come a dime a
dozen. Making money off such products involves more than talent.

Inventions are also a dime a dozen - that is all marketing.

property they owned. As for "wouldn't make nearly as much money" would
their books still be in the black? If so, I don't see justifying

So, as long as someone still makes at least some money, it is OK to
steal from them. And you are calling me un-American?

banning unauthorized copies. And of course his "development" cost
burden would be shared as people would contribute variations and other
new ideas he could then freely incorporate into his next book too.

OK, you are either amazingly naive, or just one of those crazy people.

But you appear to be an authoritarian -- the type who believes that
disobeying authority is wrong, even if the authority itself is wrong
and clearly so, or worse is corrupt and self-serving, *knowingly*
wrong or lying, instead of acting to serve your best interests.

No, I simply will not make excuses for my actions. You are attempting
to justify stealing.

Your attitude is, to put it bluntly, unAmerican in fact -- because not
questioning authority is unAmerican.

I happen to believe in copyright. That doesn't mean I don't question
authority. You are the one who wants to force everyone to release
these types of products in the way *you* see fit. I prefer to give the
creator a choice. There is nothing that currently stops you from
putting something out there in the public domain, and begging for
contributions so you can put food on the table.

I'm a big supporter of open source, but I recognize it is not a good
way of making money. I have a project I am getting ready to release
under GPL. That is only because it is a "for fun" project, and probably
has a limited interest. I'm also curious to see what others might
have to add (engineering students might find it of use). But, if it was
really really good - something I knew would be a hit - you bet your ass
I would be releasing it a way better suited to making money.

- Kurt

 

[Dag Sunde]

And... exactly what proof do you have of this? Oh, right, you don't,
all you have is your tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist ramblings. Carry
on.

I misunderstood you, then. I thought you were threatening to somehow
"hack" his net access. At least that is feasible. Threatening legal
action because you suspect foul play in Google Groups is hardly a
threat that carries any weight.

Oh, for God's sake stop it already!

Twisted/nebulous99 is a well-known Troll that have rambled on like
this on several NGs in the past.

I am really suprised that the reasonably sensible Java community
haven't just silenced him already.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

A posting with an offtopic aside inside of it is hardly comparable to
a bank robbery. Grow up.

Surely, it's a dramatic example, but the principle holds:
Just because one is not able/willing to come up with an alternative
doesn't mean that he has to accept wrong behaviour of others without
complaining.

Just because none of us is willing to clone google's services
for free for you, and/or fix google's bugs, doesn't mean that
you've got the right to demand that someone fix it for you or
provide you that service himself, or do anything else than
telling you to stop whining.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

Software vendors "renting" will obviously be worse, ...

Given your dislike against rental models, I really wonder
how you cannot "see" Vendors switching to exactly that
businessmodel, once they would be deprived of their current
right of copy-control...

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

If you disagree, and post a followup to that effect, please furnish
evidence to support your position in the form of the name of a Usenet
newsgroup that would constitute such an "appropriate forum". I will
direct similar future material to said newsgroup if it meets the
obvious criteria.

Even if there is *no forum at all*, where this would be on-topic,
even then it is still offtopic here...

Just like you deny companies the "right" to make profit,
we deny you the "right" to demand solutions for your problems for
free.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

help area of their web site, which appears to take all the text
entered into it and forward it to /dev/null ...

While you have the right to write whatever you want (with some
restrictions, though, with respect to saying wrong and bad things
about others, etc.), that amendment surely fails to give you the
right to demand anyone to really listen ...

I very much doubt any Google employees, let alone actual management,
pay attention to what goes on there,

So, where's the difference? The difference is, that
*there* your whining at least wouldn't be off-topic

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

Ahem, I think you'll find that a patent can only be issued to a named
individual or individuals. They may assign it to another person or
organization if they don't have the resources to develop it past the
prototype stage, ...

Isn't that exactly the case that is subsumed as "patent-troll"
nowadays? Namely someone who owns a patent, but doesn't
produce the product. So, big companies can just go on and
produce that invention, without the inventor seeing a cent
of it, and when he sues, he's named a patent-troll...

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

[...] actually impose their wishes unilaterally on everyone else,

Here is your mistake again... they don't impose it on *everyone*
else, but only on people who have *bought* the box in which the
software came, *and* clicked "yes", when told the conditions...

If they didn't mean "yes", they shouldn't have installed the
software, and they'd still be unscrewed by any vendor.

Oh, and of course no one would then break into their house to
smash their self-made chinaware, either

Did I mention, that no vendor has a right to intrude my harddisk,
because all the software on my disk gives me permission for
unlimited use and unlimited making copies (as long as I also copy
the source all along or by request of the receiver of the binary's
copy, not the vendor)

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

Half my data and other software would be useless, or at least require
some kind of massive conversion effort.

And of course there'd be a period of low
productivity from learning curve, likely quite steep given the
reputation unix and its derivatives have in that area.

If you so much dislike MS' business model, you might consider
spending that (admittedly huge, but one-time) effort.

Just think of the effort you currently and continuously spend
bitching about windows...

 

[Martin Gregorie]

Isn't that exactly the case that is subsumed as "patent-troll"
nowadays?
>

I hadn't heard that term.

Namely someone who owns a patent, but doesn't
produce the product. So, big companies can just go on and
produce that invention, without the inventor seeing a cent
of it, and when he sues, he's named a patent-troll...

I'd have thought that depends on his intentions: if he has a properly
valid patent (i.e. has made a working prototype, fully described it etc)
but hasn't the resources to produce it in commercial quantities I can't
see a problem if he tries to come to an arrangement with a company who
does have the resources.

If said big company makes no attempt to license the patent but just
makes produce then the inventor can and should sue the crap out of them.
I would hope he wins.

If anybody is a "patent-troll" then surely its those PV companies that
go round buying up patent portfolios to tie up a type of device. They
have no intention of making anything. They just want to parasitize the
companies that do make them.

I don't see how the "patent-troll" label can ever be applied to the
original inventor.

 

[Ricardo Palomares Martinez]

Martin Gregorie escribió:

If said big company makes no attempt to license the patent but just
makes produce then the inventor can and should sue the crap out of them.
I would hope he wins.

I attended a conference by Richard Stallmann in which he explained why
above situation is usually a lose-lose bet for small inventors, at
least in the software patents scene. If that inventor you mention
tries to sue the big company, he will promptly receive a call from the
company lawyers telling him that his patent is based on a tenth of
patents owned by the company, or over which it has cross-patent
agreement rights, so in the end, the inventor can't do anything to
prevent the big company marketing his idea.

That story was more based on the idea of small inventor trying to
market his invention, instead of one not doing it. But, in the end,
the story didn't even need to bring the topic of strong legal
departments associated to big companies and the monetary problems a
small individual would have to face to fight against them. To me,
software patents hardly can be defended as good for the individual.

That said, I respect everybody, and if someone wants to earn a living
writing and selling software, I'm not going to criticize him, he has
every right to do it. I'm against software piracy, and that's why I
try to use (and promote) free software, instead of installing pirated
copies. But if I needed to use a privative software because it was so
much better than free equivalents, I'd buy it for sure, specially if I
was planning to make money myself from using it (just ethics).

Ricardo

 

[Joe Attardi]

I attended a conference by Richard Stallmann

RMS is a whack-job.

 

[Ricardo Palomares Martinez]

Joe Attardi escribió:

RMS is a whack-job.

A very constructive post this from you, for sure. Does that mean than
you can't argue the ideas themselves, or that you stopped reading
right after seeing RMS' name?

Just curious.

 

[Twisted]

I am talking to you, Paul D. The regular repetitions of your hissy
fits are getting boring. And please spare us the death threat this
time.

There is nobody in this thread by that name, as far as I can tell.
Your "you" is ambiguous since there are dozens of people posting in
this thread, hundreds in this newsgroup, and potentially six and a
half billion lurkers reading your posting. AFAICT, you're actually
referring either to one of the lurkers or to nobody, depending on
whether the person you seem to be talking about actually exists
outside of your own mind. Even if they are real, I have no knowledge
that they are posting to this thread under any alias, reading this
thread, or even reading usenet at all.

You are looking like some kind of paranoid. Do you think someone by
that name is stalking you? Is there someone by that name that hurt you
in the past, and now you imagine them everywhere plotting against you?
Is that why you attack the person in off-topic news posts and accuse
some unspecified "you" of being this person? None of us here are
likely qualified to help you if that is the case; I know I'm not. Seek
professional help; look under "psychiatrists" in the yellow pages.
Before it's too late.