I didn't mean it from a stance of elitism nor did I intend to imply we should keep people in the dark. Rather, the presentation should be changed to convey a perspective on a person's actual knowledge of the field. I believe WebMD does a good job at mentioning in every article and on every page that this isn't medical advice and you should speak to your doctor, but it's not prominent enough so people merely ignore it.
This was found at the very bottom of their page in tiny print. Ouch. People typically preface presentations regarding the law, by mentioning that they are either not a lawyer or are a lawyer but not your lawyer and NOTHING in that talk represents legal advice, and might even be wrong. We don't do a good job of this anywhere, really. It's really bad given modern technology. We drill it into people "you can do anything" (the reality is: "you can do anything, badly, but you might be able to do a few things really well") and then provide them with an abundance of encyclopedia-like knowledge that the internet has made readily available and free, and people carve out little pieces of information in their bubble-of-knowledge and pretend they know everything in their own little universe. That's a dangerous precedent. I don't mean to imply we should discourage such behavior, rather frame it so the person doing the learning doesn't falsely believe they know more than they really do. I'm not even sure how that could be accomplished.
For example, it's easy for me to be an armchair lawyer, even though I read the actual legislation and follow groklaw, it doesn't mean I'm well versed in case law regarding the matter which is often more important than the actual law. There's a reason I'm not going around telling lawyers how to do their jobs, though I might make a comment as an opinion from time to time, I preface it with just that: it's my opinion. When I talk to a mechanic, I ask them to explain things, I don't assert that I know something they don't, and if I Google'd something, I mention "I was looking at X" and ask if they can explain something, rather than assert that my infinitesimal understanding of anything, just because I looked it up, is correct. The same goes for all professionals. I may be far more intelligent than your average person, but I don't know everything, or even a lot of things. I know just enough about my own field to know that I know almost nothing, but enough to do what I need to do, and how to learn more. The sum of my knowledge in other areas amounts to trivia, usually.
I think others have likened that to wisdom, in that it's a perspective brought on by actually learning enough about a subject to finally understand just how much you know relative to what's available. Surely there's a way to make that more apparent from the beginning without disparaging people from learning. Pointing out that people specialize would be an important part, I think.
There's a huge problem with this, though. A little bit of knowledge is often far more dangerous than no knowledge at all. With every person a self-proclaimed "expert" on software engineering/coding because they mastered the basics of if/elses and basic for loop in highschool, we'll have a repeat of Apple v Samsung's foreman claiming "this code can't possibly run on that processor, so it's not prior art" on a massive scale. Have you ever had a boss/manager who knew a little about what you do and that made them micromanage, argue and inject patently false ideology or claims, etc? It's terrible.
There are other problems, too. Such as Estonia's goals to teach from 6yo. Computer science IS abstraction. It's the art and science of solving problems WITH ABSTRACTION. It's well known children have a VERY hard time understanding abstraction (hence why advanced math isn't taught to children, not even something as basic as algebra, because variables are too abstract).
It's not for everyone. What should be done, however, is to make it much more available from about the 6th grade on. Have classes people can take, and have a rigorous treatment. Then people who have an aptitude for computer science or software engineering can actually finish High School at the same level most university graduates fail to achieve today.
The reason someone pirates something is the reason they don't buy the thing outright, which implies they aren't customers. It's quite a simple (and valid) deduction. History is full of people who demand that a logical explanation of something isn't proof that it exists. Examples: the earth is flat, the geo-centric model of the solar system, gravity, and the monty python problem. I'm sure there are thousands more, a great research topic if you're interested.
It's not an assumption. It's been shown to be quite accurate by polls, both formal and informal, and is true of many pirates by their own admission. I can tell you right now that there are plenty of games I have never bought nor will ever buy that I pirated. I've just demonstrated to you that this isn't an assumption. There are people who pirate conditionally, who might be made to be paying customers, but to claim that every pirated copy == lost sale is bunk and we've known it for a while. So it's best to ignore actual piracy rates (piracy by people who will never buy your product, regardless), and work to make those people who pirate to get around the availability/other issues you have happy so they'll buy your future products.
It's important to note that those conditional pirates STILL wouldn't have purchased your game anyway, for the given reason. However, future games that correct those issues might be purchased legitimately by those people. And if you later correct those issues, they may buy the game even if they pirated it (see: people here making that claim if Ubisoft patches their games to remove all the always-online DRM). But the statement is quite true. There are plenty of movies I would never have paid to watch had they not been on Netflix. Same goes for movies/music/games I will never purchase that I've watched/listened to/played at a friends' place. I never purchased Halo. I never owned an Xbox. Yet I played it at a friends' house. I will never purchase Halo. So as a statement of fact -- a person playing your game without purchasing a copy of it does not imply that they would have ever purchased a copy. This is the same statement as "pirates wouldn't have bought your game anyway."
On the other hand, there are plenty of cases for me personally (and for everyone else I know) where playing a game, hearing a song, seeing part of a movie, via means MPAA/RIAA/publishers would have you believe is "piracy" has actually resulted in me purchasing that thing, because I couldn't sample it otherwise. So the net effect, in reality (demonstrated by fact), is that piracy improves sales. Seems totally backwards, doesn't it?
But it doesn't matter. Pirates aren't paying customers. It doesn't matter if pirates pirate, because at the end of the day, they weren't going to buy the game anyway. That's like complaining that men aren't buying tampons and other feminine hygiene products. This is synonymous with the stance that the fashion industry takes: we don't care about knock-offs, because people who buy them aren't our customers.
There are a few things that can very obviously be done to change pirates into customers. Typically people pirate for some reason, and there are a long list of reasons why someone might pirate. Solve those problems and those pirates typically will pay. There are a few people who will always pirate no matter what, and the best solution is to just ignore them.
A few examples:
1. Give people a way to try your game before they buy it. Charging $60 for a game that is terrible puts your company in the fool-me-once category, and a LOT of people will pirate your games just to try them before paying, because you have a history of ripping people off.
2. Price fairly. Versions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 of your game were minor patches or very minor content bonuses. Package these as DLCs and charge a fraction of the price, or release them free. People may not have bought your game initially because it didn't have enough content. When it has a lot more content, they may buy it (even people who pirated it and decided there wasn't enough content). If everything in your game is held up in DLCs, the cost of your game is $60 + $40 = $100, and that's an absurd price. DLCs should be for massive content upgrades, that aren't their own games. 2 new models and 1 map isn't a DLC. Stop doing that. And it's certainly not a new game. Stop that too.
3. Oppose DRM. I should be able to play your game without an internet connection, on any computer I own with the correct operating system, and without entering a license key anywhere. At no time should my play be hindered by being required to do some action just to run the game. These mechanisms have been shown with a MASSIVE body of evidence to not prevent piracy. An authentication step is also not acceptable if it requires I must have a persistent internet connection to launch your game. An acceptable compromise is to require me to register once (a one-time auth step) and then be able to play offline, which is similar to putting Steam in offline mode. This is especially important of multiplayer games. If it's a multiplayer game, put a LAN mode into it. Remember 5-10 years ago when EVERY MULTIPLAYER GAME, EVER, had a LAN mode? Lans used to be AWESOME. They encouraged gamers to play together and network. This lead to us learning about games we didn't know about (what's everyone playing?) and go buy it. Bring that back, stop worrying about piracy.
4. Open the game to the community. This means mods. Map makers. Internal tools you've already made. A lot of pirates will buy your game JUST because they can make their own game inside of it, change it around, or use your engine/tools to make their own games. In the end, a very successful mod means more sales for you. Seriously, why the fuck don't you understand this?
5. Release everywhere in the world at the same time. This argument as a basis for piracy is weak, except in cases of certain movies/tv shows that release MONTHS apart in different regions, but there's no technological reason you can't release a game to the entire world digitally. Unless your game is banned or something in some country, release it the same day you do the primary release.
6. Listen to paying customers. Sure, a lot of us might be whiny little punks, but where do you think most of your money is coming from? This is especially important of games that expect a subscription or any MM* game. If these games have any potential balance issues, fix them immediately and as a first priority, or you'll drive people away and NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, YOU W
It's these stupid elementary courses. Basic undergraduate things where professors who spend most of their time preparing material for their seniors and/or grad students don't want to have to sit down and plan out a semester for the class that has 20 different sections because EVERYONE has to take it. Take Trigonometry for example (calculus, algebra, physics, and a few others also fit this bill). The text I've seen used is $150. That includes a $70 access key. The access key works once. ONCE. The access key allows you to create an account on the publisher's website for that book. The account created lasts for 180 days, if I remember correctly. What it gives you access to is a digital copy of the book (in a web-browser only, not a PDF, they send you data page-by-page), and lacks all of the useful features a digital system should provide (the ability to search, the ability to tag notes inline, etc).
All this hassle for what? The publisher created a system that would automatically generate questions for each class, and would automatically grade the homework for you (no more professor/TA slaving over your papers).
The key itself is $70. You can buy the key alone. That's 180 days access to the book and the online course materials (generally required if the text is being used). Not only are these texts garbage on content, but a key to let you flip through pages in a book, do some e-homework assignments, and then lose access to the thing you paid for. Great. And what about the physical text book if you pay the $80 extra for it? Well.. it has less than a 1 star review on Amazon. Terrible text. Awful. It's also at edition 10, hilariously enough. Because elementary trigonometry is a cutting-edge and rapidly evolving field, right? And heaven forbid if you wanted to use edition 9 for your class that requires edition 10, because the access keys from versions before 10 DONT WORK ON THE COURSEWARE FOR VERSION 10. Holy shit. It's so abundantly clear at this point that these systems were designed to screw over students in the most obvious and terrible ways possible. At this rate, I expect in a few decades that all you'll have to do is pay, then wait a few years, and you'll be given your degree.
Fuck modern texts. You can probably find a classic text on the subject you're interested in, or find what you need in research papers you already have access to via your university. Classic texts are TIMELESS, resell at 90-95% (in good condition), and your library (university or muni) probably already has at least one copy. They're also WAY better, and they don't have 20 editions after 4 years of republication. These modern "textbook" things are a huge, huge scam. So is most of the higher education system. To quote Good Will Hunting:
See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!
A person who "learns" (it's more rote memorization of derivation and integration rules) calculus from a modern calculus text is woefully less capable than someone who can handle Apostol or Spivak. It's the difference between learning algorithms from some anemic cheat-sheet type Cliff's Notes reference and CLRS. It's dramatic and obvious. Spend your $200-1000 per credit and $150 on a text book that has no relevance outside of 4 months of your life if you wish, but when you want a real education, when you realize later on that you actually need to learn something, hopefully you'll better know where to find it.
It looks like it's a market system based on supply/demand. What that would imply is that if people started buying massive numbers of gems with farmed gold, the price of gems on the trade would skyrocket, making gems worth trading for gold (otherwise it's not, the rate is terrible). When the trade value is significant, more people are likely to buy gems to trade them for gold. Though that might be problematic if gold is abundantly available. So there're 2 issues: they allow infinite gem sales from gold (moronic, it should be $ only, or a trade between players like the rest of the AH with a player-controlled supply/demand), and the value of gems is solely in their ability to augment your account, not in their potential to make the game more relaxed. This game nickels and dimes you constantly with incredibly high fees, being able to obtain gold via $ would make it far more enjoyable for those who have the money to spend. But as it stands, you'd get 1 gold 66s for $10, which covers almost nothing. It seems like terrible business/financial sense to me, and a bad implementation otherwise. This game still feels like a pre-pre-pre-alpha.
That would be inconsistent with the rest of the AH. People list items, other people buy them. The same should be true of gems, though the BLTC is down right now so I can't verify this (there's thousands and thousands of $$ they're losing right there). I'm quite sure you list gems at a price just like you do when selling other items, and people put up an amount of gold which buys as many gems as possible based on the quantities and prices available (low to high).
I buy thousands of mats to craft. Why is buying something exploiting? Why is currency conversion exploiting? I see a lot of people throwing around the term "exploit" without pointing out what is actually being exploited. Nothing was obviously an exploit from what I am seeing. The game is unplayable without gold. People found that you can convert this worthless karma into gold at any rate, and that's valuable because what else are you going to do with 10 billion karma?
How so? You can only buy gems from players who are selling them for gold. They aren't screwing with it at all. If anything, they were driving the value of gems in terms of gold up, so more people would likely buy gems to get gold.
It doesn't have a real-money value, because you can't get money back from gems. They're a currency. You can trade gold for them, and you can trade them back for gold. And they let you get nice quality-of-life expansions to your game, but that's about it. And it's not infinite either. Your trade has to be matched by a person who paid money for the gems. Further: it was driving the value of gems up, which meant spending money in the game was becoming a really good idea to make the game more enjoyable (a nice fat chunk of gold for your $10 versus needing to spend $500 to get a nice fat chunk of gold, a price point at which ArenaNet can go fuck itself). I don't think this was a problem, because at the enormous rarity that in-game currency exists at, almost nobody is going to buy gems to get gold, because the supply is so short that $ -> gold exchange rate is incredibly low ($1 = 50s, which won't even upgrade a castle in WvWvW). In short: it was fixing a massive oversight in the game that makes it incredibly shitty to play. ArenaNet just cost themselves a LOT of money. Typical of game developers.
Wrong. It was a conversion of currency, not free money. A currency you have a lot of (but is worthless, but not infinite) could be converted at a not-fucking-terrible rate to the useful currency, a currency which is vital and necessary to play the game in a comfortable way, so it was entirely reasonable and that it may have been unintended was NOT obvious.
Except that in this case, the refiner was selling it for one currency, and would buy it from you for another currency. So you couldn't repeat the process indefinitely, instead, it served as a means to convert your one currency that you find useless (it is, totally useless) into something more valuable (the currency used on the auction house). It's not clear that this was unintended on ArenaNet's part, and it's not clear, if intended, what the exchange rate should be. We don't know what karma is meant to be worth, but we do notice that karma is massively abundant while gold is enormously difficult to obtain especially considering the gold sinks in this game are ENORMOUS compared to how much gold you obtain actually playing the game.
So much so, trying to complete bugged (overtuned, broken) dungeons bankrupts you in repair costs. Teleporting at 80 on the same map costs 1 and a half silver. Teleporting across the world at 80 costs 3 silver. Repairing your gear costs a silver and a half PER PIECE. Most group-based events at 80 give 2-3 silver and can take as much as 20 minutes to complete, while having a modest probability of killing you. Monster density in higher level zones are such that it's very dangerous to solo because in the course of fighting one mob, you might pull more and die, and the mobs are often ranged or VERY fast so you can't just kite them like in lower zones. And drops sell from 80b to 1s40b. Few people have more than a few gold after playing for over a hundred hours, and 80 items from the vendors cost 20-30 gold EACH, and upgrading things in WvW can cost over 50s, and conquering the castle only gives you 2s (but something like 40000 experience and 1200 karma)!
With how easy it is to buy karma gear, it seems that it should be relatively easy, as well, to buy currency gear. Part of this issue is that the AH hasn't been up, so people have TONS of stuff they need to sell but can't, so currency can't accumulate in those who take higher risks. The other part is that the sinks are WAY too expensive. Especially considering dying in this game is a double-sink. An item becomes damaged (1s50b) AND you have to teleport to a waypoint to revive (another 1s50b). So you're out 3s every time you die except in WvW or in a dungeon. Pretty fucking awesome, isn't it? At this point, we're being discouraged from actually playing the game. So finding a way to dump karma and gain currency is a clear victory: it solves the issue of having massive quantities of a useless currency and makes the game playable and enjoyable without worrying that you're broke and therefore must spend 3 hours running through maps or wait for someone to come resurrect you because you died to an overtuned mob (despite having AMAZING gear) and can't teleport to the waypoint. Electric vehicles have range anxiety. GW2 play has gold anxiety. You need it to play the game and enjoy it comfortably. Yet it's UNFUCKINGOBTAINIUM in-game. So it wasn't clear at all that this wasn't the intended method to obtain gold at a reasonable rate.
To correct your analogy, the merchant you found is from a planet where unobtainium is relatively common (they have over five trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion tons of it, for chrissake, they need to get rid of it!). But to them, your currency is rare and they really want it, so they're willing to buy things from you with their cheap unobtainium but will only sell it back to you for your currency. And likewise, on your planet, your currency is unbelievably common, so common in fact it's useless to you (much like the merchant's unobtanium). So much so that you can't actually buy anything of value to you with it. Nothing. It's utterly fucking useless. Why it even exists in this universe, you have no clue. So you find a merchant that will trade you this worthless substance for something you actually want! WOOT! But when you actually do that, God (ArenaNet) peeks through the veil and says "LOL MOTHERFUCKER, GOTCHA" and then smites you down in the form of a permanent ban, and then sends that vendor 500,000,000,000 lightyears away to a part of the universe light hasn't reached yet as a punishment for trading with you.
This is what libraries are for. Instead of manually enumerating features of a GPU to enable/disable functionality in your engine, you can use a library built to do just that. Same goes with normalization. Take web development as an example: no two browsers are completely consistent (this goes pretty far, even the execution of Javascript is different on different browsers). You don't need a framework to completely abstract the underlying system from you, you just need it to do some utility stuff and even out the hills so you have something consistent to work with. I don't think something as heavy as DirectX is necessary for that, and I'm pretty sure the issues you describe have been fixed by a heavily used and stable library already, at least I get that impression from comments Carmack has made in his keynotes and the recent discussions about OpenGL on Linux from Valve.
It does mean something. The foreman was acting as an expert witness for the other jurors, but was not admitted by the judge or any lawyer. So his opinions as a non-expert were instrumental in influencing the case. IANAL but this sounds like very good grounds for a re-trial or an appeal at least.
I'm talking specifically when he is talking about what defines prior art (you're supposed to ask the judge that, or the lawyers, not assume you know the answer), and when he claims he could read source code so he was able to explain why the "methods in software" were different (he needs to show non-obviousness) and specifically that they weren't "interchangeable" because of the processor. A software engineering expert witness could explain how differences in code may be inconsequential to the function (a while looping from len to 0 versus a for looping from 0 to len when order of traversal doesn't matter, for instance, but the code looks quite different), and how the code is likely in C or another portable language and the processor is (in general) of no consequence because the compiler generates machine-specific code. This last one is a big issue for me: unless the foreman is an extremely well trained and experienced programmer, he's unlikely to be able to find issues in code that would actually conflict with a given architecture, such as word size assumptions, endianness assumptions, etc. These aren't obvious in code. And further, I don't think this actually merits consideration as not the prior state of the art. If this was the state of the art at the time, an expert would easily be able to reproduce code to run on another processor. This leads to obviousness, which would indicate that it is prior art.
Sure this particular issue wasn't instrumental in the whole case, but we can't know the extent to which he poisoned this jury.
I'd like to point out that it seems to me that patent infringement and considerations of the prior art and obviousness are being inverted lately. Prior art should be a very wide concept, because of obviousness. As I understand the patent legislation that I've read, if it's obvious to any expert given the current state of the art (later deemed the prior art), it doesn't meet patentability criteria. Instead, with modern patent trolls and people like the foreman in this case, everyone seems to be making arguments that would dramatically shrink what defines prior art and obviousness by requiring an identical and exact copy of an existing thing (which could, however, be a claim for a copyright infringement), rather than allowing for obviousness to any expert. Simultaneously, when considering infringement, which should be that of an identical and exact copy in part or whole of a patented thing, it seems like people are trying to apply obviousness by claiming "well, it's obvious if you changed our patent in these ways that they would be infringing, so you see, they're infringing". I'm pretty sure it's supposed to work the other way around.
The initial impression is that he's describing a computer with a TV-tuner that does X, Y, and Z that are common functions already present in common software packages and/or as built-in OS features.
Every invention is a combination of previously known parts. What makes it an invention is a combination in a new way that provides new advantages. The first airplane was a combination of a known type of engine and some known aerodynamic structures.
Yes, but patentability requires innovation and non-obviousness.
Certainly, having video editing software in a TiVo-like device is a desirable feature (a quick Google search turns up a lot of people asking about it around 2006... four years after this patent was filed), and that combination hadn't been made yet. That makes it a patentable invention.
That's what it describes, at any level, so that's all I needed to read.
You're free to assert that "this patent should not have been issued based on my understanding of the prior art." (And then we can have a discussion about what constitutes prior art.)
But you're not free to assert incorrect statements about "what the patent covers," which you gleaned by failing to read the claims. That is factually incorrect, and blatantly disregards how the patent system works. Worse, it's a very common mistake at Slashdot - other people in this very same thread are arguing, "the only thing that matters in the patent is the abstract / brief summary; the claims are irrelevant."
If you really want to criticize a system, you should try to understand its basic operation first. Pretty simple stuff.
That's what I assert here. It doesn't matter if customers were asking for a feature from a company like TiVo, there's a community around home-made DVRs and media centers that both support all of TiVo's functionality as well as inline video editing (both via remote and via direct file access from networked computers). I've seen these systems and this software. There are packaged linux distributions with all of the necessary software to do this. And these projects were being used as early as TiVo if not earlier. The combination of a computer system designed to capture video files with video editing software is pretty obvious, and hardly inventive. And the editing via remote has already been done (I've had VCRs from pre 2000 that could do this, and a VCR operates like a crude DVR). So I argue that the patent describes a system which isn't inventive and is in part covered by prior art, and so the whole thing should be invalid.
That would make sense, if patent infringement also required the thing that is infringing to be EXACTLY the same as what's claimed in the patent. If that were the case, this case would've been dismissed because none of Samsung's products are exact copies of the iDevices. There are similarity and obviousness arguments that you're ignoring. You can't say "that infringes on this patent because it sorta kinda looks like the thing described in the patent" while saying "yeah but that's not prior art because it wouldn't run on an Apple processor." Further, this is now claiming that compilations of software for different architectures constitute patentably different systems. That means I can take your patents and compile it for my X86+ processor, which is backwards compatible with X86 but which uses a magic instruction your processor doesn't have, and suddenly I can infringe on your patent because I'm technically using it for another processor.
It should be obvious how absurd this kind of reasoning is.
However, he owns a patent. This is an obvious conflict of interest.
No it's not.
Clearly you have never read the 6th amendment. Impartiality is required.
This would be something like a person who owns and profits from copyright sitting on the jury in a case where someone was being sued for copyright infringement.
No it's not. But only a really really really [insert infinite more reallys] bad lawyer would let that person remain on the jury. Do you know how jury selection works? Sure doesn't sound like it.
Did you know that lawyers can't do background checks and ask anything they want to potential jurors during selection? You also state "remain" implying a person is already on a jury, implying jury selection has already occurred. Nice.
he clearly states he was trying to expedite the whole process to avoid being hung up on actually looking at evidence.
No he doesn't. You clearly have reading comprehension problems.
Have you watched the interview? He clearly talks about skipping over anything that wasn't unanimous. So instead of having debates and discussing evidence, he would sidebar it and move on. He claims this made it "easier" to do the hard things, but that makes no sense and he doesn't elaborate. This is consistent with what I said: he tried to hurry along the process. Moving all discussion in a case into one big lump sum at the end when 95% of the questions have been answered? That sounds an awful lot like trying to give people a reason to rush the process, and I don't see any reason aside from rushing that one would skip over a question just because they actually needed to deliberate on it. That's what juries are supposed to do. Why avoid deliberation?
Feel free to watch yourself.
This makes me curious if being a negligent juror is actually a federal crime. If it's not, it should be.
Fuck your sig, I'm modding you troll. I'm so sick and tired of seeing you post shit that's blatantly incorrect. Almost every post I've see of yours has two things in common -- they try to ruffle feathers and they contain fallacies. At this point, I'm pretty sure you know you're wrong all the time and you're just a clever troll. If you want to stop being downmodded stop being a douche bag, don't whine about it in your sig.
Because ad-hominem comments are the best way to indicate to someone any issue in their argument. Presenting facts is hard, isn't it? Why are you so angry?
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot the curl between the umount and sleep.
Where's the MilkFactory?
RIght there, I'm pointing to it.
I don't se..
Segmentation Fault
How long until I can wear that super computer on my wrist?
So would you say.. Apple might sue over squares with rounded corners with rounded corners??
I'd be happy if I got an IPv6 address with 81:68:00:81:35 somewhere in it.
©2005-2012 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved. WebMD does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See additional information.
This was found at the very bottom of their page in tiny print. Ouch. People typically preface presentations regarding the law, by mentioning that they are either not a lawyer or are a lawyer but not your lawyer and NOTHING in that talk represents legal advice, and might even be wrong. We don't do a good job of this anywhere, really. It's really bad given modern technology. We drill it into people "you can do anything" (the reality is: "you can do anything, badly, but you might be able to do a few things really well") and then provide them with an abundance of encyclopedia-like knowledge that the internet has made readily available and free, and people carve out little pieces of information in their bubble-of-knowledge and pretend they know everything in their own little universe. That's a dangerous precedent. I don't mean to imply we should discourage such behavior, rather frame it so the person doing the learning doesn't falsely believe they know more than they really do. I'm not even sure how that could be accomplished.
For example, it's easy for me to be an armchair lawyer, even though I read the actual legislation and follow groklaw, it doesn't mean I'm well versed in case law regarding the matter which is often more important than the actual law. There's a reason I'm not going around telling lawyers how to do their jobs, though I might make a comment as an opinion from time to time, I preface it with just that: it's my opinion. When I talk to a mechanic, I ask them to explain things, I don't assert that I know something they don't, and if I Google'd something, I mention "I was looking at X" and ask if they can explain something, rather than assert that my infinitesimal understanding of anything, just because I looked it up, is correct. The same goes for all professionals. I may be far more intelligent than your average person, but I don't know everything, or even a lot of things. I know just enough about my own field to know that I know almost nothing, but enough to do what I need to do, and how to learn more. The sum of my knowledge in other areas amounts to trivia, usually.
I think others have likened that to wisdom, in that it's a perspective brought on by actually learning enough about a subject to finally understand just how much you know relative to what's available. Surely there's a way to make that more apparent from the beginning without disparaging people from learning. Pointing out that people specialize would be an important part, I think.
There's a huge problem with this, though. A little bit of knowledge is often far more dangerous than no knowledge at all. With every person a self-proclaimed "expert" on software engineering/coding because they mastered the basics of if/elses and basic for loop in highschool, we'll have a repeat of Apple v Samsung's foreman claiming "this code can't possibly run on that processor, so it's not prior art" on a massive scale. Have you ever had a boss/manager who knew a little about what you do and that made them micromanage, argue and inject patently false ideology or claims, etc? It's terrible.
There are other problems, too. Such as Estonia's goals to teach from 6yo. Computer science IS abstraction. It's the art and science of solving problems WITH ABSTRACTION. It's well known children have a VERY hard time understanding abstraction (hence why advanced math isn't taught to children, not even something as basic as algebra, because variables are too abstract).
It's not for everyone. What should be done, however, is to make it much more available from about the 6th grade on. Have classes people can take, and have a rigorous treatment. Then people who have an aptitude for computer science or software engineering can actually finish High School at the same level most university graduates fail to achieve today.
The reason someone pirates something is the reason they don't buy the thing outright, which implies they aren't customers. It's quite a simple (and valid) deduction. History is full of people who demand that a logical explanation of something isn't proof that it exists. Examples: the earth is flat, the geo-centric model of the solar system, gravity, and the monty python problem. I'm sure there are thousands more, a great research topic if you're interested.
It's not an assumption. It's been shown to be quite accurate by polls, both formal and informal, and is true of many pirates by their own admission. I can tell you right now that there are plenty of games I have never bought nor will ever buy that I pirated. I've just demonstrated to you that this isn't an assumption. There are people who pirate conditionally, who might be made to be paying customers, but to claim that every pirated copy == lost sale is bunk and we've known it for a while. So it's best to ignore actual piracy rates (piracy by people who will never buy your product, regardless), and work to make those people who pirate to get around the availability/other issues you have happy so they'll buy your future products.
It's important to note that those conditional pirates STILL wouldn't have purchased your game anyway, for the given reason. However, future games that correct those issues might be purchased legitimately by those people. And if you later correct those issues, they may buy the game even if they pirated it (see: people here making that claim if Ubisoft patches their games to remove all the always-online DRM). But the statement is quite true. There are plenty of movies I would never have paid to watch had they not been on Netflix. Same goes for movies/music/games I will never purchase that I've watched/listened to/played at a friends' place. I never purchased Halo. I never owned an Xbox. Yet I played it at a friends' house. I will never purchase Halo. So as a statement of fact -- a person playing your game without purchasing a copy of it does not imply that they would have ever purchased a copy. This is the same statement as "pirates wouldn't have bought your game anyway."
On the other hand, there are plenty of cases for me personally (and for everyone else I know) where playing a game, hearing a song, seeing part of a movie, via means MPAA/RIAA/publishers would have you believe is "piracy" has actually resulted in me purchasing that thing, because I couldn't sample it otherwise. So the net effect, in reality (demonstrated by fact), is that piracy improves sales. Seems totally backwards, doesn't it?
But it doesn't matter. Pirates aren't paying customers. It doesn't matter if pirates pirate, because at the end of the day, they weren't going to buy the game anyway. That's like complaining that men aren't buying tampons and other feminine hygiene products. This is synonymous with the stance that the fashion industry takes: we don't care about knock-offs, because people who buy them aren't our customers.
There are a few things that can very obviously be done to change pirates into customers. Typically people pirate for some reason, and there are a long list of reasons why someone might pirate. Solve those problems and those pirates typically will pay. There are a few people who will always pirate no matter what, and the best solution is to just ignore them.
A few examples:
1. Give people a way to try your game before they buy it. Charging $60 for a game that is terrible puts your company in the fool-me-once category, and a LOT of people will pirate your games just to try them before paying, because you have a history of ripping people off.
2. Price fairly. Versions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 of your game were minor patches or very minor content bonuses. Package these as DLCs and charge a fraction of the price, or release them free. People may not have bought your game initially because it didn't have enough content. When it has a lot more content, they may buy it (even people who pirated it and decided there wasn't enough content). If everything in your game is held up in DLCs, the cost of your game is $60 + $40 = $100, and that's an absurd price. DLCs should be for massive content upgrades, that aren't their own games. 2 new models and 1 map isn't a DLC. Stop doing that. And it's certainly not a new game. Stop that too.
3. Oppose DRM. I should be able to play your game without an internet connection, on any computer I own with the correct operating system, and without entering a license key anywhere. At no time should my play be hindered by being required to do some action just to run the game. These mechanisms have been shown with a MASSIVE body of evidence to not prevent piracy. An authentication step is also not acceptable if it requires I must have a persistent internet connection to launch your game. An acceptable compromise is to require me to register once (a one-time auth step) and then be able to play offline, which is similar to putting Steam in offline mode. This is especially important of multiplayer games. If it's a multiplayer game, put a LAN mode into it. Remember 5-10 years ago when EVERY MULTIPLAYER GAME, EVER, had a LAN mode? Lans used to be AWESOME. They encouraged gamers to play together and network. This lead to us learning about games we didn't know about (what's everyone playing?) and go buy it. Bring that back, stop worrying about piracy.
4. Open the game to the community. This means mods. Map makers. Internal tools you've already made. A lot of pirates will buy your game JUST because they can make their own game inside of it, change it around, or use your engine/tools to make their own games. In the end, a very successful mod means more sales for you. Seriously, why the fuck don't you understand this?
5. Release everywhere in the world at the same time. This argument as a basis for piracy is weak, except in cases of certain movies/tv shows that release MONTHS apart in different regions, but there's no technological reason you can't release a game to the entire world digitally. Unless your game is banned or something in some country, release it the same day you do the primary release.
6. Listen to paying customers. Sure, a lot of us might be whiny little punks, but where do you think most of your money is coming from? This is especially important of games that expect a subscription or any MM* game. If these games have any potential balance issues, fix them immediately and as a first priority, or you'll drive people away and NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, YOU W
It's these stupid elementary courses. Basic undergraduate things where professors who spend most of their time preparing material for their seniors and/or grad students don't want to have to sit down and plan out a semester for the class that has 20 different sections because EVERYONE has to take it. Take Trigonometry for example (calculus, algebra, physics, and a few others also fit this bill). The text I've seen used is $150. That includes a $70 access key. The access key works once. ONCE. The access key allows you to create an account on the publisher's website for that book. The account created lasts for 180 days, if I remember correctly. What it gives you access to is a digital copy of the book (in a web-browser only, not a PDF, they send you data page-by-page), and lacks all of the useful features a digital system should provide (the ability to search, the ability to tag notes inline, etc).
All this hassle for what? The publisher created a system that would automatically generate questions for each class, and would automatically grade the homework for you (no more professor/TA slaving over your papers).
The key itself is $70. You can buy the key alone. That's 180 days access to the book and the online course materials (generally required if the text is being used). Not only are these texts garbage on content, but a key to let you flip through pages in a book, do some e-homework assignments, and then lose access to the thing you paid for. Great. And what about the physical text book if you pay the $80 extra for it? Well.. it has less than a 1 star review on Amazon. Terrible text. Awful. It's also at edition 10, hilariously enough. Because elementary trigonometry is a cutting-edge and rapidly evolving field, right? And heaven forbid if you wanted to use edition 9 for your class that requires edition 10, because the access keys from versions before 10 DONT WORK ON THE COURSEWARE FOR VERSION 10. Holy shit. It's so abundantly clear at this point that these systems were designed to screw over students in the most obvious and terrible ways possible. At this rate, I expect in a few decades that all you'll have to do is pay, then wait a few years, and you'll be given your degree.
Fuck modern texts. You can probably find a classic text on the subject you're interested in, or find what you need in research papers you already have access to via your university. Classic texts are TIMELESS, resell at 90-95% (in good condition), and your library (university or muni) probably already has at least one copy. They're also WAY better, and they don't have 20 editions after 4 years of republication. These modern "textbook" things are a huge, huge scam. So is most of the higher education system. To quote Good Will Hunting:
See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!
A person who "learns" (it's more rote memorization of derivation and integration rules) calculus from a modern calculus text is woefully less capable than someone who can handle Apostol or Spivak. It's the difference between learning algorithms from some anemic cheat-sheet type Cliff's Notes reference and CLRS. It's dramatic and obvious. Spend your $200-1000 per credit and $150 on a text book that has no relevance outside of 4 months of your life if you wish, but when you want a real education, when you realize later on that you actually need to learn something, hopefully you'll better know where to find it.
It looks like it's a market system based on supply/demand. What that would imply is that if people started buying massive numbers of gems with farmed gold, the price of gems on the trade would skyrocket, making gems worth trading for gold (otherwise it's not, the rate is terrible). When the trade value is significant, more people are likely to buy gems to trade them for gold. Though that might be problematic if gold is abundantly available. So there're 2 issues: they allow infinite gem sales from gold (moronic, it should be $ only, or a trade between players like the rest of the AH with a player-controlled supply/demand), and the value of gems is solely in their ability to augment your account, not in their potential to make the game more relaxed. This game nickels and dimes you constantly with incredibly high fees, being able to obtain gold via $ would make it far more enjoyable for those who have the money to spend. But as it stands, you'd get 1 gold 66s for $10, which covers almost nothing. It seems like terrible business/financial sense to me, and a bad implementation otherwise. This game still feels like a pre-pre-pre-alpha.
That would be inconsistent with the rest of the AH. People list items, other people buy them. The same should be true of gems, though the BLTC is down right now so I can't verify this (there's thousands and thousands of $$ they're losing right there). I'm quite sure you list gems at a price just like you do when selling other items, and people put up an amount of gold which buys as many gems as possible based on the quantities and prices available (low to high).
I buy thousands of mats to craft. Why is buying something exploiting? Why is currency conversion exploiting? I see a lot of people throwing around the term "exploit" without pointing out what is actually being exploited. Nothing was obviously an exploit from what I am seeing. The game is unplayable without gold. People found that you can convert this worthless karma into gold at any rate, and that's valuable because what else are you going to do with 10 billion karma?
How so? You can only buy gems from players who are selling them for gold. They aren't screwing with it at all. If anything, they were driving the value of gems in terms of gold up, so more people would likely buy gems to get gold.
What exploit?
It doesn't have a real-money value, because you can't get money back from gems. They're a currency. You can trade gold for them, and you can trade them back for gold. And they let you get nice quality-of-life expansions to your game, but that's about it. And it's not infinite either. Your trade has to be matched by a person who paid money for the gems. Further: it was driving the value of gems up, which meant spending money in the game was becoming a really good idea to make the game more enjoyable (a nice fat chunk of gold for your $10 versus needing to spend $500 to get a nice fat chunk of gold, a price point at which ArenaNet can go fuck itself). I don't think this was a problem, because at the enormous rarity that in-game currency exists at, almost nobody is going to buy gems to get gold, because the supply is so short that $ -> gold exchange rate is incredibly low ($1 = 50s, which won't even upgrade a castle in WvWvW). In short: it was fixing a massive oversight in the game that makes it incredibly shitty to play. ArenaNet just cost themselves a LOT of money. Typical of game developers.
Wrong. It was a conversion of currency, not free money. A currency you have a lot of (but is worthless, but not infinite) could be converted at a not-fucking-terrible rate to the useful currency, a currency which is vital and necessary to play the game in a comfortable way, so it was entirely reasonable and that it may have been unintended was NOT obvious.
Except that in this case, the refiner was selling it for one currency, and would buy it from you for another currency. So you couldn't repeat the process indefinitely, instead, it served as a means to convert your one currency that you find useless (it is, totally useless) into something more valuable (the currency used on the auction house). It's not clear that this was unintended on ArenaNet's part, and it's not clear, if intended, what the exchange rate should be. We don't know what karma is meant to be worth, but we do notice that karma is massively abundant while gold is enormously difficult to obtain especially considering the gold sinks in this game are ENORMOUS compared to how much gold you obtain actually playing the game.
So much so, trying to complete bugged (overtuned, broken) dungeons bankrupts you in repair costs. Teleporting at 80 on the same map costs 1 and a half silver. Teleporting across the world at 80 costs 3 silver. Repairing your gear costs a silver and a half PER PIECE. Most group-based events at 80 give 2-3 silver and can take as much as 20 minutes to complete, while having a modest probability of killing you. Monster density in higher level zones are such that it's very dangerous to solo because in the course of fighting one mob, you might pull more and die, and the mobs are often ranged or VERY fast so you can't just kite them like in lower zones. And drops sell from 80b to 1s40b. Few people have more than a few gold after playing for over a hundred hours, and 80 items from the vendors cost 20-30 gold EACH, and upgrading things in WvW can cost over 50s, and conquering the castle only gives you 2s (but something like 40000 experience and 1200 karma)!
With how easy it is to buy karma gear, it seems that it should be relatively easy, as well, to buy currency gear. Part of this issue is that the AH hasn't been up, so people have TONS of stuff they need to sell but can't, so currency can't accumulate in those who take higher risks. The other part is that the sinks are WAY too expensive. Especially considering dying in this game is a double-sink. An item becomes damaged (1s50b) AND you have to teleport to a waypoint to revive (another 1s50b). So you're out 3s every time you die except in WvW or in a dungeon. Pretty fucking awesome, isn't it? At this point, we're being discouraged from actually playing the game. So finding a way to dump karma and gain currency is a clear victory: it solves the issue of having massive quantities of a useless currency and makes the game playable and enjoyable without worrying that you're broke and therefore must spend 3 hours running through maps or wait for someone to come resurrect you because you died to an overtuned mob (despite having AMAZING gear) and can't teleport to the waypoint. Electric vehicles have range anxiety. GW2 play has gold anxiety. You need it to play the game and enjoy it comfortably. Yet it's UNFUCKINGOBTAINIUM in-game. So it wasn't clear at all that this wasn't the intended method to obtain gold at a reasonable rate.
To correct your analogy, the merchant you found is from a planet where unobtainium is relatively common (they have over five trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion tons of it, for chrissake, they need to get rid of it!). But to them, your currency is rare and they really want it, so they're willing to buy things from you with their cheap unobtainium but will only sell it back to you for your currency. And likewise, on your planet, your currency is unbelievably common, so common in fact it's useless to you (much like the merchant's unobtanium). So much so that you can't actually buy anything of value to you with it. Nothing. It's utterly fucking useless. Why it even exists in this universe, you have no clue. So you find a merchant that will trade you this worthless substance for something you actually want! WOOT! But when you actually do that, God (ArenaNet) peeks through the veil and says "LOL MOTHERFUCKER, GOTCHA" and then smites you down in the form of a permanent ban, and then sends that vendor 500,000,000,000 lightyears away to a part of the universe light hasn't reached yet as a punishment for trading with you.
Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?
This is what libraries are for. Instead of manually enumerating features of a GPU to enable/disable functionality in your engine, you can use a library built to do just that. Same goes with normalization. Take web development as an example: no two browsers are completely consistent (this goes pretty far, even the execution of Javascript is different on different browsers). You don't need a framework to completely abstract the underlying system from you, you just need it to do some utility stuff and even out the hills so you have something consistent to work with. I don't think something as heavy as DirectX is necessary for that, and I'm pretty sure the issues you describe have been fixed by a heavily used and stable library already, at least I get that impression from comments Carmack has made in his keynotes and the recent discussions about OpenGL on Linux from Valve.
It does mean something. The foreman was acting as an expert witness for the other jurors, but was not admitted by the judge or any lawyer. So his opinions as a non-expert were instrumental in influencing the case. IANAL but this sounds like very good grounds for a re-trial or an appeal at least.
I'm talking specifically when he is talking about what defines prior art (you're supposed to ask the judge that, or the lawyers, not assume you know the answer), and when he claims he could read source code so he was able to explain why the "methods in software" were different (he needs to show non-obviousness) and specifically that they weren't "interchangeable" because of the processor. A software engineering expert witness could explain how differences in code may be inconsequential to the function (a while looping from len to 0 versus a for looping from 0 to len when order of traversal doesn't matter, for instance, but the code looks quite different), and how the code is likely in C or another portable language and the processor is (in general) of no consequence because the compiler generates machine-specific code. This last one is a big issue for me: unless the foreman is an extremely well trained and experienced programmer, he's unlikely to be able to find issues in code that would actually conflict with a given architecture, such as word size assumptions, endianness assumptions, etc. These aren't obvious in code. And further, I don't think this actually merits consideration as not the prior state of the art. If this was the state of the art at the time, an expert would easily be able to reproduce code to run on another processor. This leads to obviousness, which would indicate that it is prior art.
Sure this particular issue wasn't instrumental in the whole case, but we can't know the extent to which he poisoned this jury.
I'd like to point out that it seems to me that patent infringement and considerations of the prior art and obviousness are being inverted lately. Prior art should be a very wide concept, because of obviousness. As I understand the patent legislation that I've read, if it's obvious to any expert given the current state of the art (later deemed the prior art), it doesn't meet patentability criteria. Instead, with modern patent trolls and people like the foreman in this case, everyone seems to be making arguments that would dramatically shrink what defines prior art and obviousness by requiring an identical and exact copy of an existing thing (which could, however, be a claim for a copyright infringement), rather than allowing for obviousness to any expert. Simultaneously, when considering infringement, which should be that of an identical and exact copy in part or whole of a patented thing, it seems like people are trying to apply obviousness by claiming "well, it's obvious if you changed our patent in these ways that they would be infringing, so you see, they're infringing". I'm pretty sure it's supposed to work the other way around.
The initial impression is that he's describing a computer with a TV-tuner that does X, Y, and Z that are common functions already present in common software packages and/or as built-in OS features.
Every invention is a combination of previously known parts. What makes it an invention is a combination in a new way that provides new advantages. The first airplane was a combination of a known type of engine and some known aerodynamic structures.
Yes, but patentability requires innovation and non-obviousness.
Certainly, having video editing software in a TiVo-like device is a desirable feature (a quick Google search turns up a lot of people asking about it around 2006... four years after this patent was filed), and that combination hadn't been made yet. That makes it a patentable invention.
That's what it describes, at any level, so that's all I needed to read.
You're free to assert that "this patent should not have been issued based on my understanding of the prior art." (And then we can have a discussion about what constitutes prior art.)
But you're not free to assert incorrect statements about "what the patent covers," which you gleaned by failing to read the claims. That is factually incorrect, and blatantly disregards how the patent system works. Worse, it's a very common mistake at Slashdot - other people in this very same thread are arguing, "the only thing that matters in the patent is the abstract / brief summary; the claims are irrelevant."
If you really want to criticize a system, you should try to understand its basic operation first. Pretty simple stuff.
That's what I assert here. It doesn't matter if customers were asking for a feature from a company like TiVo, there's a community around home-made DVRs and media centers that both support all of TiVo's functionality as well as inline video editing (both via remote and via direct file access from networked computers). I've seen these systems and this software. There are packaged linux distributions with all of the necessary software to do this. And these projects were being used as early as TiVo if not earlier. The combination of a computer system designed to capture video files with video editing software is pretty obvious, and hardly inventive. And the editing via remote has already been done (I've had VCRs from pre 2000 that could do this, and a VCR operates like a crude DVR). So I argue that the patent describes a system which isn't inventive and is in part covered by prior art, and so the whole thing should be invalid.
That would make sense, if patent infringement also required the thing that is infringing to be EXACTLY the same as what's claimed in the patent. If that were the case, this case would've been dismissed because none of Samsung's products are exact copies of the iDevices. There are similarity and obviousness arguments that you're ignoring. You can't say "that infringes on this patent because it sorta kinda looks like the thing described in the patent" while saying "yeah but that's not prior art because it wouldn't run on an Apple processor." Further, this is now claiming that compilations of software for different architectures constitute patentably different systems. That means I can take your patents and compile it for my X86+ processor, which is backwards compatible with X86 but which uses a magic instruction your processor doesn't have, and suddenly I can infringe on your patent because I'm technically using it for another processor.
It should be obvious how absurd this kind of reasoning is.
However, he owns a patent. This is an obvious conflict of interest.
No it's not.
Clearly you have never read the 6th amendment. Impartiality is required.
This would be something like a person who owns and profits from copyright sitting on the jury in a case where someone was being sued for copyright infringement.
No it's not. But only a really really really [insert infinite more reallys] bad lawyer would let that person remain on the jury. Do you know how jury selection works? Sure doesn't sound like it.
Did you know that lawyers can't do background checks and ask anything they want to potential jurors during selection? You also state "remain" implying a person is already on a jury, implying jury selection has already occurred. Nice.
he clearly states he was trying to expedite the whole process to avoid being hung up on actually looking at evidence.
No he doesn't. You clearly have reading comprehension problems.
Have you watched the interview? He clearly talks about skipping over anything that wasn't unanimous. So instead of having debates and discussing evidence, he would sidebar it and move on. He claims this made it "easier" to do the hard things, but that makes no sense and he doesn't elaborate. This is consistent with what I said: he tried to hurry along the process. Moving all discussion in a case into one big lump sum at the end when 95% of the questions have been answered? That sounds an awful lot like trying to give people a reason to rush the process, and I don't see any reason aside from rushing that one would skip over a question just because they actually needed to deliberate on it. That's what juries are supposed to do. Why avoid deliberation? Feel free to watch yourself.
This makes me curious if being a negligent juror is actually a federal crime. If it's not, it should be.
Fuck your sig, I'm modding you troll. I'm so sick and tired of seeing you post shit that's blatantly incorrect. Almost every post I've see of yours has two things in common -- they try to ruffle feathers and they contain fallacies. At this point, I'm pretty sure you know you're wrong all the time and you're just a clever troll. If you want to stop being downmodded stop being a douche bag, don't whine about it in your sig.
Because ad-hominem comments are the best way to indicate to someone any issue in their argument. Presenting facts is hard, isn't it? Why are you so angry?