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[Reply #15 on:]

Jonathan,

I think you obscured the boundaries between OEM license and perpetual license and some more.

In OEM licnese, the software is licensed to be used ONLY with specific piece of hardware, that is why you can't use your win XP disk on a computer other than the one it comes with. The license is tied to/locked to the hardware. It's strange and wrong but you all agreed to it.That I don't like much but can bare since if I preserve the hardware, I still have my rights to run the software. I am not saying that own the software but I own a seat to use it on the specific hardware (OEM) or not (non-OEM). The ownership is with the author or company. I can't see the source code so how can I own it? I have ownership to its usage. Do you really own your book? Well, the text belongs to the publisher and you can't just use the text anywhere you like.

Can you resell OEM software without hardware? NO! Can you resell non-OEM software like used version of Doom3? Oh yeah! (unless the license that you so hasty agreed on prevents you from reselling)

Now about perpetual license, I have a few disks of sim city 2000 from early 90s. If I will, I can purchase an old mac and run the game on the computer. The privilege of using the software in mine and it doesn't go away as long as I have the disks and serial code. I am not bound by subscription, like sims of the day. If I stop paying I will lose my character or something. Perpetual and annual subscription are very different. I have perpetual license on most my software. If I keep old hardware that work with the software, I can be buried with them. Anyone interested in selling me your wolf-3d original game? I'm listening!

[Reply #16 on:]

Anyone interested in selling me your wolf-3d original game? I'm listening!

Heh - somewhere I probably have a backup copy of Wolfenstein (the -original- 2D Wolfenstein) for the Apple IIe floating around...

[Reply #17 on:]

This is off topic but if you can send me that in mail I can trade with you my arduino shield PCB and some parts.

More have come! The more the merrier! What's your take on cloud computing?

[Reply #18 on:]

Cloud computing is vaporware.


[Get it?  That's a science joke, people.]

 

[Reply #19 on:]

Cloud computing is pretty much what we used to call "timesharing", but with better "terminals" than Teletypes and character-only CRTs.

[Reply #20 on:]

This is off topic but if you can send me that in mail I can trade with you my arduino shield PCB and some parts.

More have come! The more the merrier! What's your take on cloud computing?

I personally think the term is becoming more market hype than anything. A part of me feels like this idea of "cloud computing" is a throwback to time-sharing computing, or thin computing.

If done right, it could be a good thing - the idea of a computer that grows and shrinks as your needs do, if it happened in an "invisible" or minimally hands-on manner, is a good thing for many applications (Rackspace has a cloud web server infrastructure that is kinda neat - but there are a lot of limitations that you can quickly hit depending on your business needs - for instance, if you have a web site that needs to be HIPAA compliant - their cloud structure doesn't support that).

It would also be nice to be able to offload some of the processing and/or storage needs from your home machine; especially if this was built in. But it all needs to be cheap before you see real wide-spread usage. Plus it needs to be really cross-platform.

I have on my Ubuntu box at home the Dropbox app - nice little storage and sharing, if and when I need it. It being cross-platform is a real bonus. Now - if only it was cheaper (the free version is nice, but if I wanted to store say 1TB of info - I nor anyone else I know could afford it).

I also worry about privacy concerns - especially when it comes to business usage of cloud or cloud-like services. Who owns the data? What happens should you move or change your business, or want to move the data? How are you guaranteed that they don't have a copy somewhere (that could potentially be sold to a competitor or otherwise)? Similar questions and more apply if you are using it at a personal level as well.

Now - the idea of being able to use multiple computers spread over the net for storage and processing purposes - that is appealing to me (though I don't have an application in mind); if you could get something set up that was distributed and free (ie, bittorrent on steroids) - so that you (and others on the net) could share storage and processing of each others machines, in such a manner so that no single person could see or tell what you were using or doing (nor would care); ie, a secure P2P distributed processing and storage platform - that would be highly useful.

It would also be a real thorny issue for the authorities - of course...