So for every gallon of gasoline we use to produce gasoline, we get.81 gallons of gasoline. Either I'm missing something, or this study is seriously fubar...
I for one am glad that McKool Smith is aggressively pursuing those that would rip off McKool Smith's innovative technologies just to make a buck. Without this patent, McKool Smith would have never been able to develop innovative games such as... what? There are no games developed by McKool Smith? Surely with such an innovative technology McKool Smith would have been able to make *great* games. Alas, there are none, because McKool Smith is just a lawyer, not a game developer. This is good for McKool Smith, however, for a number of reasons. The first is that lawyers are the most powerful lobby in Congress. It's practically impossible to pass legislation that would cut down on dear McKool's profits. It's partially because of this that Litigation is the fastest growing industry in the United States. An industry with no product. An industry that lives by leeching from other industries. An industry whose growth, if left unchecked, will cripple our economy. An industry whose growth will remain unchecked, because of a virtual stranglehold on the political process in this country.
The title of this story says expired trademark. Then it says they were complaining about copyright infringement. Then they say that the patent expired.
Trademarks, copyrights, and patents are completely different. They are *not* interchangeable terms. The laws are different, the terms are different, and they are meant to protect different things.
Pac-Man Vs is cool. Zelda: Four Swords is alright.
The really great GC-GBA connectivity game is FF:Crystal Chronicles. And none of that "GBA connectivity only required to sell more GBAs" crap. I've played through the entire game. I've logged 70+ hours playing this game with 3 - 4 players. If you had menus clogging up the screen everytime someone wanted to switch items or abilities, many parts of the game would be unplayable.
wtf? You would think that security would be a foremost concern for a voting machine, but diebold has shown from the beginning that security is an afterthought for them. Cryptographic hashes of the software should have been available *from the very beginning*. Even *Microsoft* signs their code nowadays. But for Diebold, the cryptographic hashes, that are standard in most of the software industry, are an afterthought. Here's the hashes a week before the election! See, aren't we secure? What a joke...
Diebold's executives should go to jail for pulling this scam on the government. Those in the government who went along for the ride should be severely punished.
We have enough vote fraud in this country *without* Diebold. The last thing we need are unverifiable voting machines.
President Bush did prematurely end the DOJ vs MS anti-trust case, but he didn't do it by replacing the judge. The President *does not* have the authority replace judges. Bush ended the DOJ vs MS case by directing the DOJ to not pursue it anymore. Shortly after he took office, the DOJ made a rather weak settlement with MS, resulting in a slap-on-the-wrist type punishment. Note that after this settlement, the states involved continued pursuing the case. The President could do nothing about this, because the State attorney generals are *not* under the authority of the President. This includes the NY State Attorney General Spitzer. Thus, this particular case will most likely not be affected by who is elected President.
There's a problem with abolishing the electoral college. The problem is that there is *a lot* of vote fraud in this country.
Stay with me.
The electoral college acts as a buffer against vote fraud in specific places. If you run up the vote, in, say, Chicago, or NYC, you'll only affect the outcome of the election in Illinois and NY, respectively. Without the electoral college, you can win the whole country by running up the vote in just a few places. Eliminating the electoral college would make vote fraud determine the outcome of our elections.
Long term, I am for abolishing the electoral college. But we need to tackle vote fraud *first*. There needs to be a huge crackdown, and we need better security methods to keep this from happening. Once we have that, then we can talk about abolishing the electoral college.
Yeah, I think polls are open for about 12 hours everywhere. Unless you work a 12 hour day which perfectly coincides with the polling hours, can't get off work to vote, and can't get an absentee ballot, you won't be disenfranchised by this.
Unfortunately, it looks like that's going to happen no matter who wins. There's ample amounts of fraud on *both* sides. At least this year, unlike 2000, at lot of it is being uncovered *before* the election, which is the superior time to catch it, imo.
My advice to everyone on this particular issue: 1. Send those involved to jail. The GOP should oust the people who decided to fund this fraudulent organization. Yesterday.
2. States affected should pass emergency legislation to allow late voter registration for this election, and encourage everyone who registered this year to double check that they *are* registered. This should be heavily publicized. All this is expensive, but much better than the alternative.
I understand your exuberance for a new Zelda game, but if you only bought a gamecube for that game, why didn't you wait until the game was out to buy the cube? It's not like there's going to be a shortage of gamecubes when the new Zelda comes out. As an added bonus, it's quite possible the cube will drop in price by then, if it hasn't dropped in price since you bought it already.
You could have waited until day 2 or 3 of signups. The signups were open a week, and participants were chosen *randomly*, not according to signup time.
I don't understand why you would buy a system specifically for one game, when there's not even an announced release date for that game.
I want a ps2 for gran turismo 4. Back in march, a few weeks before it was supposed to come out, I made this comment to a gamestop employee, who of course immediately tried to convince me to buy a ps2 then rather than waiting for the game. I said, no thanks, I'll wait until the game is actually out.
The release date passes, there's no game, and the game still isn't out. AFAIK, there's still no announced release date.
This is why I never preorder anything until a few days before release and reviews are already all over the web, so I know it's definitely going to come out when its supposed to. I have no desire to put my $5 down and then have the game be delayed over and over again, until I don't want it anymore and I've lost my $5.
you picked the wrong field. Go to law school, or get your mba. Or at least your masters in something. With just a college degree, you'll be stuck low on the totem pole for the forseeable future.
I don't understand what he's trying to accomplish. A few more people will hear about him this way, but most of them will think he's a whacko. This isn't a very good way to make a first impression...
The media, in general, doesn't seem to be very friendly to protestors these days.
We don't know what happened yet, or why. Everything is just speculation. The few details we have come from indymedia itself, which, quite frankly, I don't trust, especially when the matter concerns indymedia.
There was a warrant issued, so there was some reason for it. This would have been possible even without the so-called PATRIOT act. So far, I see no evidence of abuse of power.
You're a software company. You *are* violating software patents. You can't have software without violating software patents. There are too many of them, covering too many trivial and common software tasks. It's only a matter of time before someone sues you for infringement.
There are only a few true defenses against this kind of attack. The first is to have a large patent portfolio of your own, to countersue any litigants. Unfortunately, this doesn't work against the recent trend of companies in the business of lititgation (eg. SCO). How can you sue a company for patent infringement if they have no product?
The second defense is a large bankroll. Not very many people successfully sue IBM, since IBM has an army of lawyers at their disposal to delay the lawsuit until the litigants run out of money.
My advice to any software developers is to go to law school and become lawyers. Litigation is the fastest growing industry in the US. Software companies will be put out of business by litigation companies, the only ones left will be behemoths like IBM and Microsoft, both of which will be using dev teams in places like India and China, where they can be paid a fraction of what US developers make. So quit your job, and go to law school. Try to make enough money so you can retire when the system collapses in on itself. Things won't be very pretty at that point.
We can continue to press our government for patent reform to try to prevent all this, but they won't listen. They haven't listened in the past, and they won't listen in the future. I give my money to the EFF, I write letters and emails to my congressional representatives, yet nothing makes a difference. Instead of fighting for reform, we're fighting the INDUCE act so IP law doesn't become even *more* insanse. It's a losing battle. The lack of proportional representation in the US forces the election to be decided on just a few issues. The rest are auctioned off to the highest bidder for a few campaign contributions.
Wow, I'm jaded. I remember when I used to have a shred of hope that things would improve...
Bill Clinton's DOJ was pressing this case big time against Microsoft. George W Bush called off the DOJ once he was in office. You couldn't possibly have been paying attention four years ago if you think there's not difference between Republicans and Democrats on this issue...
They came out dead last in the next gen console wars
If by dead last, you mean outselling the xbox, then yeah, you're right. But I believe most people reserver the term "dead last" to mean "sold the least consoles of any major game console," in which case, the xbox is in dead last. Worldwide, more gamecubes have been sold than xboxes. And keep in mind that the gamecube has been very profitable for Nintendo. They don't need to be in first place to keep making consoles and games.
Why would Congress pass such a law when it is controlled *by the two major parties*? They wouldn't be the two major parties if they didn't control Congress...
Yeah, 'cause, you know, new medicines don't cost anything to develop.
Company A develops and patents drug B to treat sickness C. You come along and decide that drug B should be cheap for all, and license Company D to create a generic version, thus saving many lives. Company A, having just lost tons of money on B's development, and not wanting to repeat the experience, ends development on drug E to treat sickness F, drug G to treat sickness H, and drug I to treat sickness J. As a result, many who could have been treated by drugs E, G, and I die.
Money makes the world go round. It's all well and good to claim otherwise, but that doesn't make it true.
Slashdot Mirror
So for every gallon of gasoline we use to produce gasoline, we get .81 gallons of gasoline. Either I'm missing something, or this study is seriously fubar...
Well, I'm not sure if they'd be legal to buy, but it is illegal to sell, even if you only sell to people "who already have a legal copy."
I for one am glad that McKool Smith is aggressively pursuing those that would rip off McKool Smith's innovative technologies just to make a buck. Without this patent, McKool Smith would have never been able to develop innovative games such as... what? There are no games developed by McKool Smith? Surely with such an innovative technology McKool Smith would have been able to make *great* games. Alas, there are none, because McKool Smith is just a lawyer, not a game developer. This is good for McKool Smith, however, for a number of reasons. The first is that lawyers are the most powerful lobby in Congress. It's practically impossible to pass legislation that would cut down on dear McKool's profits. It's partially because of this that Litigation is the fastest growing industry in the United States. An industry with no product. An industry that lives by leeching from other industries. An industry whose growth, if left unchecked, will cripple our economy. An industry whose growth will remain unchecked, because of a virtual stranglehold on the political process in this country.
The title of this story says expired trademark. Then it says they were complaining about copyright infringement. Then they say that the patent expired.
Trademarks, copyrights, and patents are completely different. They are *not* interchangeable terms. The laws are different, the terms are different, and they are meant to protect different things.
Pac-Man Vs is cool. Zelda: Four Swords is alright.
The really great GC-GBA connectivity game is FF:Crystal Chronicles. And none of that "GBA connectivity only required to sell more GBAs" crap. I've played through the entire game. I've logged 70+ hours playing this game with 3 - 4 players. If you had menus clogging up the screen everytime someone wanted to switch items or abilities, many parts of the game would be unplayable.
wtf? You would think that security would be a foremost concern for a voting machine, but diebold has shown from the beginning that security is an afterthought for them. Cryptographic hashes of the software should have been available *from the very beginning*. Even *Microsoft* signs their code nowadays. But for Diebold, the cryptographic hashes, that are standard in most of the software industry, are an afterthought. Here's the hashes a week before the election! See, aren't we secure? What a joke...
Diebold's executives should go to jail for pulling this scam on the government. Those in the government who went along for the ride should be severely punished.
We have enough vote fraud in this country *without* Diebold. The last thing we need are unverifiable voting machines.
You're right, but you're *so* wrong.
President Bush did prematurely end the DOJ vs MS anti-trust case, but he didn't do it by replacing the judge. The President *does not* have the authority replace judges. Bush ended the DOJ vs MS case by directing the DOJ to not pursue it anymore. Shortly after he took office, the DOJ made a rather weak settlement with MS, resulting in a slap-on-the-wrist type punishment. Note that after this settlement, the states involved continued pursuing the case. The President could do nothing about this, because the State attorney generals are *not* under the authority of the President. This includes the NY State Attorney General Spitzer. Thus, this particular case will most likely not be affected by who is elected President.
There's a problem with abolishing the electoral college. The problem is that there is *a lot* of vote fraud in this country.
Stay with me.
The electoral college acts as a buffer against vote fraud in specific places. If you run up the vote, in, say, Chicago, or NYC, you'll only affect the outcome of the election in Illinois and NY, respectively. Without the electoral college, you can win the whole country by running up the vote in just a few places. Eliminating the electoral college would make vote fraud determine the outcome of our elections.
Long term, I am for abolishing the electoral college. But we need to tackle vote fraud *first*. There needs to be a huge crackdown, and we need better security methods to keep this from happening. Once we have that, then we can talk about abolishing the electoral college.
Yeah, I think polls are open for about 12 hours everywhere. Unless you work a 12 hour day which perfectly coincides with the polling hours, can't get off work to vote, and can't get an absentee ballot, you won't be disenfranchised by this.
"Can anyone tell me what the Internet was and how it almost destroyed humankind in the year 2007?" - school teacher Debbie
Unfortunately, it looks like that's going to happen no matter who wins. There's ample amounts of fraud on *both* sides. At least this year, unlike 2000, at lot of it is being uncovered *before* the election, which is the superior time to catch it, imo.
My advice to everyone on this particular issue:
1. Send those involved to jail. The GOP should oust the people who decided to fund this fraudulent organization. Yesterday.
2. States affected should pass emergency legislation to allow late voter registration for this election, and encourage everyone who registered this year to double check that they *are* registered. This should be heavily publicized. All this is expensive, but much better than the alternative.
I'm a republican, btw.
Isn't it pretty easy to fry an RFID chip?
"What, the chip on my license doesn't work? I wonder how that happenned..."
I understand your exuberance for a new Zelda game, but if you only bought a gamecube for that game, why didn't you wait until the game was out to buy the cube? It's not like there's going to be a shortage of gamecubes when the new Zelda comes out. As an added bonus, it's quite possible the cube will drop in price by then, if it hasn't dropped in price since you bought it already.
You could have waited until day 2 or 3 of signups. The signups were open a week, and participants were chosen *randomly*, not according to signup time.
I don't understand why you would buy a system specifically for one game, when there's not even an announced release date for that game.
I want a ps2 for gran turismo 4. Back in march, a few weeks before it was supposed to come out, I made this comment to a gamestop employee, who of course immediately tried to convince me to buy a ps2 then rather than waiting for the game. I said, no thanks, I'll wait until the game is actually out.
The release date passes, there's no game, and the game still isn't out. AFAIK, there's still no announced release date.
This is why I never preorder anything until a few days before release and reviews are already all over the web, so I know it's definitely going to come out when its supposed to. I have no desire to put my $5 down and then have the game be delayed over and over again, until I don't want it anymore and I've lost my $5.
hehe. pretty scummy, but that seems to be how campaigns are run these days.
I don't think third party candidates are going to get many votes this election.
you picked the wrong field. Go to law school, or get your mba. Or at least your masters in something. With just a college degree, you'll be stuck low on the totem pole for the forseeable future.
Or maybe that's just what happened to me =[
I don't understand what he's trying to accomplish. A few more people will hear about him this way, but most of them will think he's a whacko. This isn't a very good way to make a first impression...
The media, in general, doesn't seem to be very friendly to protestors these days.
We don't know what happened yet, or why. Everything is just speculation. The few details we have come from indymedia itself, which, quite frankly, I don't trust, especially when the matter concerns indymedia.
There was a warrant issued, so there was some reason for it. This would have been possible even without the so-called PATRIOT act. So far, I see no evidence of abuse of power.
You're a software company. You *are* violating software patents. You can't have software without violating software patents. There are too many of them, covering too many trivial and common software tasks. It's only a matter of time before someone sues you for infringement.
There are only a few true defenses against this kind of attack. The first is to have a large patent portfolio of your own, to countersue any litigants. Unfortunately, this doesn't work against the recent trend of companies in the business of lititgation (eg. SCO). How can you sue a company for patent infringement if they have no product?
The second defense is a large bankroll. Not very many people successfully sue IBM, since IBM has an army of lawyers at their disposal to delay the lawsuit until the litigants run out of money.
My advice to any software developers is to go to law school and become lawyers. Litigation is the fastest growing industry in the US. Software companies will be put out of business by litigation companies, the only ones left will be behemoths like IBM and Microsoft, both of which will be using dev teams in places like India and China, where they can be paid a fraction of what US developers make. So quit your job, and go to law school. Try to make enough money so you can retire when the system collapses in on itself. Things won't be very pretty at that point.
We can continue to press our government for patent reform to try to prevent all this, but they won't listen. They haven't listened in the past, and they won't listen in the future. I give my money to the EFF, I write letters and emails to my congressional representatives, yet nothing makes a difference. Instead of fighting for reform, we're fighting the INDUCE act so IP law doesn't become even *more* insanse. It's a losing battle. The lack of proportional representation in the US forces the election to be decided on just a few issues. The rest are auctioned off to the highest bidder for a few campaign contributions.
Wow, I'm jaded. I remember when I used to have a shred of hope that things would improve...
Uhmm...
Bill Clinton's DOJ was pressing this case big time against Microsoft. George W Bush called off the DOJ once he was in office. You couldn't possibly have been paying attention four years ago if you think there's not difference between Republicans and Democrats on this issue...
I'm a Republican, btw...
They came out dead last in the next gen console wars
If by dead last, you mean outselling the xbox, then yeah, you're right. But I believe most people reserver the term "dead last" to mean "sold the least consoles of any major game console," in which case, the xbox is in dead last. Worldwide, more gamecubes have been sold than xboxes. And keep in mind that the gamecube has been very profitable for Nintendo. They don't need to be in first place to keep making consoles and games.
See, that's what's so great about CSPAN =]
lol. Mod parent funny.
Why would Congress pass such a law when it is controlled *by the two major parties*? They wouldn't be the two major parties if they didn't control Congress...
Yeah, 'cause, you know, new medicines don't cost anything to develop.
Company A develops and patents drug B to treat sickness C. You come along and decide that drug B should be cheap for all, and license Company D to create a generic version, thus saving many lives. Company A, having just lost tons of money on B's development, and not wanting to repeat the experience, ends development on drug E to treat sickness F, drug G to treat sickness H, and drug I to treat sickness J. As a result, many who could have been treated by drugs E, G, and I die.
Money makes the world go round. It's all well and good to claim otherwise, but that doesn't make it true.