Unlike the vast majority of people on slashdot (especially those whining loudest about patents), I actually have real knowledge and experience with them (though I would not hold myself out as a patent expert). I've filed several patents (for my own business and a previous employer) and my wife is a laywer & is admitted to the patent bar. I simply cited the website to end the silly debate.
Your assertion was simply wrong so there was no reason for me to read through a bunch of sophomoric rants on slashdot. If you still think the "article" illustrated something relevant to this debate, then please tell us exactly what it was.
Thank you for confirming that you are indeed an elitist prick with an attitude that reeks of bullshit.
I wasn't completely sure before, but no there's no doubt.
Oh, I'm sorry, did you actually think your "real knowledge and experience" with patents makes your opinion worth more than that of anyone else? Sorry kid, you still get just one vote, like every other Joe Sixpack.
I didn't read this case, but citing slashdot on patent issues is like citing Soviet propaganda to find out about the US Constitution. It is just about the worst place to find reliable information on patents. You know, the first part of your post might deserve a +5 informative because you happen to know of some website dealing with law, but piece is without question a -1 troll. Too bad you can't give a post two different mods. Some of us actually do bother to read the linked article (and sometimes even a few more articles on the same subject, if they exist).
No, actually, your product or process does have to show all the elements listed in the patent. The real absurdity is that as long as your product does have all those elements, you're infringing, no matter how insignificant those elements actually are to your product, and no matter how obvious those elements might look to you. One great example is that lawsuit against Nintendo http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/08/ 2138250 over the Wiimote, because it has a "trigger" button underneath. And coincidently, the Wiimote also has buttons on top just like the item that Nintendo is supposedly infringing on.
Over half the work in plumbing and electrical is in planning and preparation. It looks like those items would largely be taken care of with this system, leaving nothing but running the actual pipe and wires, and even that would be faster with these "ducts" than having to run it through umpteen dozen holes in wall studs and joists.
Yeah, I've done both plumbing and electrical myself, about 4 years of experience in them actually.
Wrong. I actually never saw any Star Wars movie before Episode 1 came out. At that point I first watched 4-6, then 1 (I was 18 at the time). Episode 1 was complete utter shite compared to the trilogy, and 2 and 3 are not much better. The special effects might be marginally better in 1-3 (though even that's a matter of debate) but then we all know special effects is not what makes a movie great. I have since watched the original trilogy several times again, but have yet to bring myself to see 1 again.
Well the acting of Haydensen may not have helped any, but the plots and storyline of I-III sucked far more than Haydensen's acting. It would take too much time to go into detail about specifics, so I'll just say that pretty much all the elements of episoides I-III that were supposed to explain episodes IV-VI aren't convincing at all. Like for instance, how un-Vader-like Anakin's transformation is to Vader. You're telling me that wuss became Vader, and that's how it happened? Yeah, right.
Ah well, there's no good way to pay the artists and not the record companies I suppose... Well, you could always toss them an email and suggest they throw up a "Donate via PayPal" button on their websites. Even better would be if they could also make a few of their own pieces of music outside the record label and put them up for free download, but that's probably prohibited by their recording contracts.
I'm not sure where you got that from, but I do find it a bit hard to believe. Radio stations do have to pay royalties each and every time they play a copyrighted song. Hmm, perhaps those particular labels thought people would just record the music off the air instead of buying it?
I think I get your real point though. The music and record industry are constantly complaining about and trying to shut down things that actually make them more profit, not less. (VHS anyone?)
What's really scary for anyone who likes Playstation is that the PS3 can already be found sitting on the shelf at Wal-Mart, despite the console launching with only 200K units in the US. Apparently the low supply hasn't mattered, as demand seems to have already been met.
Obvious troll, but I'll bite. The 32-bit Sempron is nothing more or less than the continuation of the old 32-bit Athlon XP CPU line, and Semprons carrying the same numerical designation as their old Athlon XP counterparts have exactly the same specs. Why they changed the name I'm not exactly sure, but it's still the exact same CPU. Celerons on the other hand are just Pentiums without most of the L2 cache, which makes them heavily crippled since the P4 with its long pipeline depends very much on their on-die cache.
No, it's got something do do with it, because we were discussing whether this right was a 'negative' one, which it isn't if it can be deemed to infringe upon somebody else's territory. No actually, we weren't. Maybe you're getting me confused with someone else?
Still, you must retract your earlier point about 'all rights being negative'. I never made that point. Perhaps you should check post history a bit more carefully.
I shall not rethink that point, because I'd far rather be living in a liberal Western society today than in the Middle East 2000 years ago. Abolished death penalty (in Europe), legalized drugs (in the Netherlands), more freedom of speech (Quran occasionally mentions murdering infidels, although is inconsistent), etc. And as previously mentioned, religious texts are indeed inconsistent. At least modern texts can be changed if they are inconsistent, making the principle of defining our current morality by them far more sound. And yes, human morality does change over time, perhaps as we discover new knowledge or just plain evolve. I don't really see that as a problem. This is where we'll definitely have to agree to disagree. In time we'll truly see the entirety of the effects of current human authority. Personally I'm going to have to guess that we'll have seen history repeat itself yet again.
I'm sorry, but often, the line between 'attack' and 'defend' is to blurry for me to tell which is which. That's your own personal problem, which actually has nothing to do with this debate.
Not really. If you're unaware before you enter that I'm yelling stuff, you will be forced to listen to me at least once. That's like saying the victim didn't have to enter the corridor where they were raped. True. I'll give you that one. But I guess generally rape is considered worse than being forced to listen to someone else's views on whatever topic for a few seconds or a minute.
I can't see any better solution than a current human authority. I'd much rather have that than some arbitrary text written down in some book by a handful of people (religion). Heh. The irony in that is pretty funny. You do realize that "arbitrary text written down in some book by a handful of people" is exactly what all current human authority is? Pretty much the only claim you can try to make here is that today's human authority is better than the authority in religion because it's a couple thousand years newer, but history has shown us that current human authority really hasn't done much to improve things over what various religions gave us hundreds or even thousands of years ago (in many cases, current human authority has actually made things worse). So you might want to rethink that point.
Sorry, but that has absolutely nothing to do with your post that I was responding to. Maybe you don't even remember or understand your own posts?
You're still not getting it.
Rights are things you can claim in the absence of any restriction. They stand alone. Fair use is only a defence - it doesn't come into effect until somebody accuses you of copyright infringement.
I'm not saying this because I believe it to be a good thing - I'd be more than happy if fair use was a right. Unfortunately it's not. You were trying to make a claim that the right to Fair Use is somehow different from the right to Free Speech because it only gets exercised as a defense. The problem with your claim is that all rights really only come into effect when needed as a defense. Like for example your right to not have your house searched without a warrant. Yeah, I'm sure you're constantly exercising that right every day. Every morning you make a special trip to the police department just to let them know that they can't search your house without a warrant, right? Or how about your right to not have troops stationed at your house without your consent. Do you make sure you exercise that right every day? Or maybe... just maybe... you'll wait to do anything about that right until they actually do try to station troops at your house? All of this and your bogus claim has absolutely nothing to do with how much weight the various rights carry, or whether they're listed in the Constitution or some other US law. Sorry, but your "fair use is only a defense" argument is about as sturdy as a two-legged stool.
What about the 'right to bear arms'? That gives people an ability to easily inflict serious physical damage on others. Or are you about to seriously argue that it's a 'negative' right because bearing arms isn't actually the same thing as firing them (which is an obvious common result of the former)? Having the right to bear arms does not give you the right to attack with them. The right to bear arms is the right to defend yourself, your family, and your property with them. As in, you have the right to carry a firearm to defend yourself in case someone tries to rape you. It's basically a provision to allow you to defend your own rights if no one else will defend them for you.
What about my free speech in a public place? Does that 'extend' into your body because you can't avoid hearing me if you walk past, and get offended? If you're forcing someone to listen to you, then yes you're violating their rights. But if you happen to be yelling your views in the middle of Times Square, no one is being forced to listen to you. They are after all perfectly capable of not walking there, or at least wearing some kind of hearing protection.
According to whom is rape wrong? I doubt most rapists would agree. According to most people, rape is wrong. Even most sane rapists would agree that it's wrong. We all do things we consider wrong. But your question does serve to illustrate one of the problems most of Western Civilization faces today. We do seem to have a need (or at least a tendency) to base rights and morals on something beyond human authority. History has proven that no one person (or even group of people) will have a perspective sufficiently objective and unbiased to base human rights or morals on. Which begs the question... what should we use as the ultimate basis for human rights?
Really? So the right to Free Speech only exists when someone tries to censor you? Following your logic, one would have to say that Free Speech is only a defense - it doesn't come into effect until someone accuses you of saying something illegal.
Free Speech and Fair Use are exactly the same in this regard. They both only come into effect when someone tries to restrict you from exercising them.
Copying someone else's work is still making use of a "fair use" right, whether or not copyrights even exist.
Making money off whatever brilliant ideas we happen to come up with is not an inherent right. It's a privilege.
And that helps a band with their first album, how? And without copyright (which you imply in the quote above should be done away with), how does even the established band with fans that you describe make any money beyond their costs?
Oh please. It's entertainment. If you can make money off it at all you should consider yourself fortunate. It's not unreasonable in the least to demand that a new band proves itself before they get paid. Most profitable bands have had to do free entertainment before they got paid for anything.
If you're really that concerned about someone "pirating" your "hard work" in your book-writing, maybe you should leave the authoring to people who actually care about what they're writing instead of just making money for sitting at a desk.
If something is really worth being said/written/produced, the artist will almost invariably produce his work whether he gets paid for it or not. Making money off his passion is just an added bonus. If he doesn't care enough about his work to do it without assurance of money, it's usually not worth producing at all.
That being said, I do support copyright - with reasonable limitations. Durations of 75 years after the death of the creator isn't even close to being reasonable. Ten years total duration, with a possible extension to fifteen would be reasonable.
No, it still doesn't. It's the jump from running a few servers to running a few thousand servers that's the actual hard part to make work. If you're already running 10,000 servers, setting up another 500,000 more isn't that big of a deal. More money, sure. What you keep bringing up is the internet connections. That's the easy part, and has been solved many times over for networks far bigger than XBox Live. And it's also really simple to see if connections are the cause of the lag - if your ping is low, your connection to the server is not the issue. (This eliminates actual internet bandwidth, routers, the whole connection shebang. And BTW, if that actually IS what's causing their lag issues, they're far more incompetent than even I would have accused them of being.) If you're still getting lag, its the performance of the server hardware/software config that's causing the issue. And that's exactly what does not change no matter how many servers you're running. Each server will still be set up to handle the same number of users, regardless of how many total servers you have to run. So yes, I can absolutely tell you with a straight face that having more servers won't impact the performance of each individual server. (Assuming of course that they're at least competent enough to calculate things like heat, power needs, etc. Then again, this is Microsoft... maybe I'm giving them too much credit.)
But again, MS isn't even meeting their expectations for number of installed users. Their installed server system should exceed current demand. Instead it's not even adequate for the customers they do have.'
Maybe Microsoft should hire a few Blizzard techs. I'm sure they could give them a few pointers...
Yeah that's exactly what I was thinking. So basically they're letting the movie industry set the actual value of the films, to the point that even "justice" is based on the price they set. If that's not price-fixing, wtf is?
First, the only Zelda game I can remember with any side-scrolling elements was Zelda-2 for NES. Link's Awakening for GB also had some side-scrolling elements. I know what you mean though; Zelda as a whole is not a side-scroller series. But I think what the OP meant was side-scrollers and other 2D games like the old Zelda games.
Besides that minute quibble I do agree with your post.:)
For what it's worth, most of my favorite games are not 3D.
Ok first off, no I'm not wrong. Whether you have 200K or 5million online users still doesn't matter. You're still not going to run 10,000 game servers on one machine. The only difference that makes is how many dedicated servers they have to run overall, it has nothing to do with the performance of individual servers. And contrary to what you try to imply, having more servers and more infrastructure will not impact the individual servers either. Unless of course you're a crappy company that doesn't know how to run game servers.
But I'll play along with you for a bit. So let's say overall subscriber numbers actually meant something here. Now what you have to look at is that MS is predicting 10 million console units sold by the end of the year. They have another 2 weeks to do that. If they have 5 million users online now, and they can't even handle that many, do you really think they're going to straighten all that out in another 2 weeks? They've had a whole year to prepare for large amounts of users, they don't have as many users as they expected, and they still can't get their servers to work right.
Slashdot Mirror
Your assertion was simply wrong so there was no reason for me to read through a bunch of sophomoric rants on slashdot. If you still think the "article" illustrated something relevant to this debate, then please tell us exactly what it was.
Thank you for confirming that you are indeed an elitist prick with an attitude that reeks of bullshit.I wasn't completely sure before, but no there's no doubt.
Oh, I'm sorry, did you actually think your "real knowledge and experience" with patents makes your opinion worth more than that of anyone else? Sorry kid, you still get just one vote, like every other Joe Sixpack.
No, actually, your product or process does have to show all the elements listed in the patent. The real absurdity is that as long as your product does have all those elements, you're infringing, no matter how insignificant those elements actually are to your product, and no matter how obvious those elements might look to you. One great example is that lawsuit against Nintendo http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/08/ 2138250 over the Wiimote, because it has a "trigger" button underneath. And coincidently, the Wiimote also has buttons on top just like the item that Nintendo is supposedly infringing on.
Yeah, I've done both plumbing and electrical myself, about 4 years of experience in them actually.
Wrong. I actually never saw any Star Wars movie before Episode 1 came out. At that point I first watched 4-6, then 1 (I was 18 at the time). Episode 1 was complete utter shite compared to the trilogy, and 2 and 3 are not much better. The special effects might be marginally better in 1-3 (though even that's a matter of debate) but then we all know special effects is not what makes a movie great. I have since watched the original trilogy several times again, but have yet to bring myself to see 1 again.
Well the acting of Haydensen may not have helped any, but the plots and storyline of I-III sucked far more than Haydensen's acting. It would take too much time to go into detail about specifics, so I'll just say that pretty much all the elements of episoides I-III that were supposed to explain episodes IV-VI aren't convincing at all. Like for instance, how un-Vader-like Anakin's transformation is to Vader. You're telling me that wuss became Vader, and that's how it happened? Yeah, right.
No offense Mr. Stretchy, but I think you pretty much missed it here.
Erm.. that should say "music and movie industries."
I think I get your real point though. The music and record industry are constantly complaining about and trying to shut down things that actually make them more profit, not less. (VHS anyone?)
The only problem with your post is Buffalo can be quite swift. Unless you're talking about the sauce. But even that can be swift for some people.
What's really scary for anyone who likes Playstation is that the PS3 can already be found sitting on the shelf at Wal-Mart, despite the console launching with only 200K units in the US. Apparently the low supply hasn't mattered, as demand seems to have already been met.
Fair enough. I neglected to mention the socket 754 Semprons that were only 32-bit. Other than that, my previous post is correct.
Obvious troll, but I'll bite. The 32-bit Sempron is nothing more or less than the continuation of the old 32-bit Athlon XP CPU line, and Semprons carrying the same numerical designation as their old Athlon XP counterparts have exactly the same specs. Why they changed the name I'm not exactly sure, but it's still the exact same CPU. Celerons on the other hand are just Pentiums without most of the L2 cache, which makes them heavily crippled since the P4 with its long pipeline depends very much on their on-die cache.
Free Speech and Fair Use are exactly the same in this regard. They both only come into effect when someone tries to restrict you from exercising them.
Copying someone else's work is still making use of a "fair use" right, whether or not copyrights even exist.
Oh please. It's entertainment. If you can make money off it at all you should consider yourself fortunate. It's not unreasonable in the least to demand that a new band proves itself before they get paid. Most profitable bands have had to do free entertainment before they got paid for anything.
If you're really that concerned about someone "pirating" your "hard work" in your book-writing, maybe you should leave the authoring to people who actually care about what they're writing instead of just making money for sitting at a desk.
If something is really worth being said/written/produced, the artist will almost invariably produce his work whether he gets paid for it or not. Making money off his passion is just an added bonus. If he doesn't care enough about his work to do it without assurance of money, it's usually not worth producing at all.
That being said, I do support copyright - with reasonable limitations. Durations of 75 years after the death of the creator isn't even close to being reasonable. Ten years total duration, with a possible extension to fifteen would be reasonable.
But again, MS isn't even meeting their expectations for number of installed users. Their installed server system should exceed current demand. Instead it's not even adequate for the customers they do have.'
Maybe Microsoft should hire a few Blizzard techs. I'm sure they could give them a few pointers...
Wow. Just wow.
Oh, and yes that's an *actual* 100gig partition, not 100 billion bytes...
Besides that minute quibble I do agree with your post. :)
For what it's worth, most of my favorite games are not 3D.
But I'll play along with you for a bit. So let's say overall subscriber numbers actually meant something here. Now what you have to look at is that MS is predicting 10 million console units sold by the end of the year. They have another 2 weeks to do that. If they have 5 million users online now, and they can't even handle that many, do you really think they're going to straighten all that out in another 2 weeks? They've had a whole year to prepare for large amounts of users, they don't have as many users as they expected, and they still can't get their servers to work right.