To use an analogy, you can copyright Micky Mouse or Bugs Bunny, but the patent equivalent would be patenting use of a mouse, or patenting the use of a comedic drawn humanoid figure. Easier to get around the copyright in this scenario if you are in the industry.
How does that work? Having a patent on Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny would cover that specific mouse or bunny, not all of them. Patenting the "use of a mouse" would be like owning the copyright to every mouse ever. The only differentiation I can see is that copyrights are applied to "works of art" and patents are applied to actual inventions, or at least they're supposed to be.
It's not a "problem", it's the nature of a totally open and free (ideally) communications medium. It's a double edged sword. If you're doing something where you care about the privacy of your communications, you encrypt and obfuscate. The GP has it right IMO.
I do like twisted a lot, but with regards to SocketServer, I can tell you that the company I work for uses it in production applications and it works quite well for us. I supposed twisted is easier to work with, less that you have to do by yourself, etc. But if you're limited to the standard library, it works just fine.
Didn't the "discontinuation" announcement specifically say that they were simply stopping it being a Google branded thing and open sourcing it? Not only that, but they also said they had plans to continue developing it. They were just killing the Google branded part. It was never going away in the first place.
That's even less feasible than shutting down the networks entirely. How will you figure out who is participating in the attacks and who is just reporting on them and trying to warn others? By hand, maybe, but you won't have the response time to deal with it. If you automate the process, you're going to silence people trying to report on what's happening or warn others. And of course, you'd still need the cooperation of Twitter or whatever social network you're talking about to make all this happen. This is a really stupid idea any way you slice it.
You know, this seems to be par for the course with government contracts, and I've honestly never understood why. If my company contracts another company to do Job X for $Y million in Z months/years/whatever, that's a legally binding contract. If they go over budget, or don't deliver on time, or don't do the job they were supposed to do, we don't pay them. Why does the government? Is it because they can just ship it off to the taxpayers? Are they in bed with the companies bidding on the contract and getting lots of hookers and blow? Is it both?
Agreed. I would format my code the way I write it in Python anyway for readability, so why not? Forcing better code readability is a fine tradeoff for me. I might think a beginner would have more trouble understanding that nicely formatted code block A is the same as code block B with completely random indentation and line breaks, even though they look totally different. On the other hand, this doesn't apply when dealing with lists, tuples and dictionaries, where whitespace doesn't matter until you actually close it, so maybe there might be an issue there. Overall though, Python is a simple language with a very strong standard library that I would absolutely recommend for beginners. Hell, I'd recommend it for basically anyone. We do 99% of our code in Python at my workplace (web pages, cron scripts, network applications, etc.) and I personally find it fantastic to write in.
I saw him a few years ago in Toronto for the Straight Outta Lynwood tour, and he did play all his classic hits. I specifically remember Eat It and Amish Paradise both, and the encore was Albuquerque which was incredible to see performed live in its entirety. He opened the show with White & Nerdy and came out on stage riding a Segway. The show was fantastic, one of the best I've ever seen. There were costume changes between almost every song, and videos playing while they changed sets. It was a full-on multimedia show, not just a concert. If you get the chance to see him, do it. I'm seeing him again in a few weeks for the new tour. I'm really hoping he opens with the Gaga track and comes out of a chicken egg or something.
You misunderstand what I mean by "scarcity". I mean that if you think up a unique idea, my using of that idea does not prevent you in anyway from also using it at the same time. What you refer to as "scarcity" sounds more like "credit" for discovering something first, which obviously is limited to whomever comes up with the idea. My reasoning for "running to a patent attorney", as you put it, would be to ensure that I get credit for whatever invention I came up with. In our current system, "credit" means that I'm the only one who is allowed to make money off my invention for a certain amount of time.
Now I argue that if the issue is recognition of a useful invention and monetary compensation, we ought to be able to handle this without imposing restrictions on other people making use of this idea. After all, isn't the way new ideas come about by building on older ones? Everybody is standing on the shoulders of giants, but they act like they're standing completely on their own. I thoroughly believe that this kind of thinking about IP is leading us towards a complete stagnation of real innovation that could progress us as a species. Eventually, everything will be tied up in IP and nobody will be able to create anything new.
Because physical property is naturally scarce. If I'm using a plot of land, you can't use the same plot of land. Hence, we have a conflict that physical property law resolves. Intellectual property has no built-in scarcity. In fact, IP laws actually create artificial scarcity where none exists.
I think this pretty much demonstrates how copyright has become the big bogeyman that circumvents any sanity in law any more. It's become somewhat out of control, and something people are treating as the most important thing going.
They're not mutually exclusive. DLC for disc-based games, or cross-platform digital download titles like Mega Man 9, for example. Even if it's disc-only, I'd rather get it on another platform at this point just because of how poorly they've handled this.
I know I personally won't be putting my credit card info on there ever again. That means I'll likely be playing cross platform games on my 360 exclusively.
It's harder on Amazon, because you might not have bought the product from them. When you're dealing with XBLA games, the system knows for certain whether you bought the game or not. Seems like a pretty obvious and effective solution to me.
Seriously, that seems to be the obvious answer to your problems. Only people who actually bought the game can rate it. Tons of people have gold subscriptions anyway. You really think this limitation is going to prevent what happened with one game's users downvoting other games?
Exactly what I was thinking. The small size of tweets naturally lend themselves to "extreme" opinions that can be distilled down to that length. A more thoughtful, reasoned opinion will naturally end up longer, and that is exactly what Twitter is not. Facebook, that's a legitimate criticism, I suppose. But then again, the reason people liked Facebook was simply for connecting with people they already knew. I don't think they're interested in simply messaging some random person online.
Personally, I found the elements that were streamlined in ME2 were the ones I disliked in ME1. Mostly micromanaging your team's inventory. That spreadsheet aspect of most traditional RPGs can go fuck itself as far as I'm concerned. I also felt like ME2 had a bigger main story but less side quests. I personally liked this, as it meant that I saw most or all of the game more easily. In ME1, I was bombarded with random side quests triggered by overhearing announcements on elevators that I didn't give a shit about, filling up my quest log. In ME2, the loyalty quests were optional, but they tied directly into the suicide mission at the very end. I liked that a lot more. I also enjoyed the characters more in ME1. Well, Tali is still the same and you get Grunt instead of Wrex, but Kaiden and Ashley were lame. I never liked either of them much. Garrus I loved and was thrilled when I found him in ME2.
I think he meant to say that nothing matters except corporate profits. That's the only basis for which I can see logical justification that further extending copyright is "good" for something.
The Slim never featured linux to begin with. They cut out the hardware to enable dual booting the way it had been done in other models to save costs.
Except there was never any hardware required specifically to do that. Geohot got OtherOS working on the slim, thus proving that there was no technical limitation to running it there.
It's not peculiar at all when you consider than anyone can use the banner of Anonymous to do anything they want. The people who hacked HGBarry are almost certainly not the same people who troll other users on Facebook and YouTube.
Indeed. As a Canadian, I can tell you that our politicians from all major parties are on record as saying they don't give a flying fuck about the US Special 301 list, because it's run by Big Content. Not their exact words, of course, but you get the idea.
Again, I have no clue why anyone would do this but the fact remains that they do and I have to deal with it.
The reason they do it is because they don't have a clue either. For many of these users, MS Word is possibly the only thing they know how to work with any kind of proficiency, with the exception of a web browser. Even then, they probably think IE is the Internet.
Slashdot Mirror
To use an analogy, you can copyright Micky Mouse or Bugs Bunny, but the patent equivalent would be patenting use of a mouse, or patenting the use of a comedic drawn humanoid figure. Easier to get around the copyright in this scenario if you are in the industry.
How does that work? Having a patent on Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny would cover that specific mouse or bunny, not all of them. Patenting the "use of a mouse" would be like owning the copyright to every mouse ever. The only differentiation I can see is that copyrights are applied to "works of art" and patents are applied to actual inventions, or at least they're supposed to be.
It's not a "problem", it's the nature of a totally open and free (ideally) communications medium. It's a double edged sword. If you're doing something where you care about the privacy of your communications, you encrypt and obfuscate. The GP has it right IMO.
I do like twisted a lot, but with regards to SocketServer, I can tell you that the company I work for uses it in production applications and it works quite well for us. I supposed twisted is easier to work with, less that you have to do by yourself, etc. But if you're limited to the standard library, it works just fine.
Didn't the "discontinuation" announcement specifically say that they were simply stopping it being a Google branded thing and open sourcing it? Not only that, but they also said they had plans to continue developing it. They were just killing the Google branded part. It was never going away in the first place.
That's even less feasible than shutting down the networks entirely. How will you figure out who is participating in the attacks and who is just reporting on them and trying to warn others? By hand, maybe, but you won't have the response time to deal with it. If you automate the process, you're going to silence people trying to report on what's happening or warn others. And of course, you'd still need the cooperation of Twitter or whatever social network you're talking about to make all this happen. This is a really stupid idea any way you slice it.
You know, this seems to be par for the course with government contracts, and I've honestly never understood why. If my company contracts another company to do Job X for $Y million in Z months/years/whatever, that's a legally binding contract. If they go over budget, or don't deliver on time, or don't do the job they were supposed to do, we don't pay them. Why does the government? Is it because they can just ship it off to the taxpayers? Are they in bed with the companies bidding on the contract and getting lots of hookers and blow? Is it both?
Agreed. I would format my code the way I write it in Python anyway for readability, so why not? Forcing better code readability is a fine tradeoff for me. I might think a beginner would have more trouble understanding that nicely formatted code block A is the same as code block B with completely random indentation and line breaks, even though they look totally different. On the other hand, this doesn't apply when dealing with lists, tuples and dictionaries, where whitespace doesn't matter until you actually close it, so maybe there might be an issue there. Overall though, Python is a simple language with a very strong standard library that I would absolutely recommend for beginners. Hell, I'd recommend it for basically anyone. We do 99% of our code in Python at my workplace (web pages, cron scripts, network applications, etc.) and I personally find it fantastic to write in.
I saw him a few years ago in Toronto for the Straight Outta Lynwood tour, and he did play all his classic hits. I specifically remember Eat It and Amish Paradise both, and the encore was Albuquerque which was incredible to see performed live in its entirety. He opened the show with White & Nerdy and came out on stage riding a Segway. The show was fantastic, one of the best I've ever seen. There were costume changes between almost every song, and videos playing while they changed sets. It was a full-on multimedia show, not just a concert. If you get the chance to see him, do it. I'm seeing him again in a few weeks for the new tour. I'm really hoping he opens with the Gaga track and comes out of a chicken egg or something.
You misunderstand what I mean by "scarcity". I mean that if you think up a unique idea, my using of that idea does not prevent you in anyway from also using it at the same time. What you refer to as "scarcity" sounds more like "credit" for discovering something first, which obviously is limited to whomever comes up with the idea. My reasoning for "running to a patent attorney", as you put it, would be to ensure that I get credit for whatever invention I came up with. In our current system, "credit" means that I'm the only one who is allowed to make money off my invention for a certain amount of time.
Now I argue that if the issue is recognition of a useful invention and monetary compensation, we ought to be able to handle this without imposing restrictions on other people making use of this idea. After all, isn't the way new ideas come about by building on older ones? Everybody is standing on the shoulders of giants, but they act like they're standing completely on their own. I thoroughly believe that this kind of thinking about IP is leading us towards a complete stagnation of real innovation that could progress us as a species. Eventually, everything will be tied up in IP and nobody will be able to create anything new.
Because physical property is naturally scarce. If I'm using a plot of land, you can't use the same plot of land. Hence, we have a conflict that physical property law resolves. Intellectual property has no built-in scarcity. In fact, IP laws actually create artificial scarcity where none exists.
I think this pretty much demonstrates how copyright has become the big bogeyman that circumvents any sanity in law any more. It's become somewhat out of control, and something people are treating as the most important thing going.
I'm sorry, somewhat out of control?
They're not mutually exclusive. DLC for disc-based games, or cross-platform digital download titles like Mega Man 9, for example. Even if it's disc-only, I'd rather get it on another platform at this point just because of how poorly they've handled this.
I know I personally won't be putting my credit card info on there ever again. That means I'll likely be playing cross platform games on my 360 exclusively.
It's harder on Amazon, because you might not have bought the product from them. When you're dealing with XBLA games, the system knows for certain whether you bought the game or not. Seems like a pretty obvious and effective solution to me.
Seriously, that seems to be the obvious answer to your problems. Only people who actually bought the game can rate it. Tons of people have gold subscriptions anyway. You really think this limitation is going to prevent what happened with one game's users downvoting other games?
Exactly what I was thinking. The small size of tweets naturally lend themselves to "extreme" opinions that can be distilled down to that length. A more thoughtful, reasoned opinion will naturally end up longer, and that is exactly what Twitter is not. Facebook, that's a legitimate criticism, I suppose. But then again, the reason people liked Facebook was simply for connecting with people they already knew. I don't think they're interested in simply messaging some random person online.
Gah, that should be "more than ME1". I liked the characters in ME2 better.
Personally, I found the elements that were streamlined in ME2 were the ones I disliked in ME1. Mostly micromanaging your team's inventory. That spreadsheet aspect of most traditional RPGs can go fuck itself as far as I'm concerned. I also felt like ME2 had a bigger main story but less side quests. I personally liked this, as it meant that I saw most or all of the game more easily. In ME1, I was bombarded with random side quests triggered by overhearing announcements on elevators that I didn't give a shit about, filling up my quest log. In ME2, the loyalty quests were optional, but they tied directly into the suicide mission at the very end. I liked that a lot more. I also enjoyed the characters more in ME1. Well, Tali is still the same and you get Grunt instead of Wrex, but Kaiden and Ashley were lame. I never liked either of them much. Garrus I loved and was thrilled when I found him in ME2.
Thanks for reminding me. I've been meaning to actually play Baldur's Gate and GoG has both of them.
I think he meant to say that nothing matters except corporate profits. That's the only basis for which I can see logical justification that further extending copyright is "good" for something.
The Slim never featured linux to begin with. They cut out the hardware to enable dual booting the way it had been done in other models to save costs.
Except there was never any hardware required specifically to do that. Geohot got OtherOS working on the slim, thus proving that there was no technical limitation to running it there.
It's not peculiar at all when you consider than anyone can use the banner of Anonymous to do anything they want. The people who hacked HGBarry are almost certainly not the same people who troll other users on Facebook and YouTube.
Indeed. As a Canadian, I can tell you that our politicians from all major parties are on record as saying they don't give a flying fuck about the US Special 301 list, because it's run by Big Content. Not their exact words, of course, but you get the idea.
Again, I have no clue why anyone would do this but the fact remains that they do and I have to deal with it.
The reason they do it is because they don't have a clue either. For many of these users, MS Word is possibly the only thing they know how to work with any kind of proficiency, with the exception of a web browser. Even then, they probably think IE is the Internet.
First thing I thought of, to be honest. As a Python programmer, I can say it makes me pretty happy as a language.