The patent was filed in Sept. 1999. There probably wasn't a ton of prior art at that point in time. It took 8 years for it to be granted, which should tell you something.
Yeah, the patent is a monster that attempts to cover a hell of a lot of territory. It's got 171 claims, and is 97 pages long.
It covers every conceivable distribution channel (kiosks, internet, wireless, cable, device to device, publisher direct, etc.). At quick glance, it also covers encryption at just about every step in the process.
The patent isn't to protect an invention, it's to corner a market.
Non-lethal weapons aren't always non-lethal as well.
There are people killed each year by tasers and other non-lethal weapons. Just see the "riot/celebration" after the first Red Sox Series victory a few years ago. A girl was killed by police using non-lethal weapons.
Blaming Obama directly is probably a bit of a stretch in this regard. It is VERY UNLIKELY he had anything to do with the FOIA request.
The only contact he would normally have would be a general guidelines given to the associated Agency. The Agency still is the one who deals with FOIA requests.
I'd agree, the 2-D to 3-D transformation is pretty insignificant in the functionality of what actually goes on. In either case, heading and location of your avatar are passed from the client to the server. The server passes your information on to others, and others back to you.
All adding a dimension does is tact on a couple extra bytes to each transfer.
Reading their patent claims, they're patent is VERY broad and IMO pretty obvious.
It's basically saying that the client passes avatar location and heading to the server, and the server passes the info on all other nearby characters back to the clients. Thinking about the problem for a couple seconds, you should be able to determine that it MUST work this way.
Any MMO game with a central server pretty much has no option other to work this way.
I with you. Patents do need to have a lifetime of 10-20 years.
However, there needs to be reform on what can be patented. Software patents, business process patents, genomes, etc are all in need of being removed from patentable items. The patent process also needs to be sped up so that it doesn't take 3 years to be granted a patent. Additionally, there needs to be some protection against patent squatters who sit an wait years on a patent with the sole intention of suing infringers.
For copyright, the timeline is entirely too long. These never ending copyrights just harm social progress in the arts. Most money is made shortly after a work is released for nearly all art forms. The entitlement provided is excessive.
How will someone ever figure out who the rights holder is for a photo after 50 years? But that's exactly what you need to do.
Historically speaking, many games have not come with complex DRM schemes. The complex ones are pretty recent development. Up through the 90s, the most common were simple code lookups in the manual.
The game still runs, which is probably all that they're going for. You just need a txt file with the code lookups to get past the initial launching.
DRM is not all that hard to decrypt, in the great scheme of things.
It has the fatal flaw of giving you the code and the key and saying "Dont put them together." Granted, they hide it and obscure the connection as much as possible, but you still have both and just need to put them together.
Real encryption schemes hide one portion from the individual. It's insanely harder (or practically impossible) to decipher codes if they don't give you the key.
People always complain that R&D wastes money until they have no new products and the company goes under, or a new product comes out of the R&D department.
In the meantime, "R&D is blowing millions of dollars!"
It's usually the first thing cut when budgets are tight, but it is probably the worst thing to cut. It just ensures that your future prospects are even slimmer.
Taking this to the logical conclusion really highlights the major issue with this business strategy.
What happens when every content provider wants to do this sort of scheme? After all, each company feels "My content is at least as valuable as his." It will completely and utterly destroy the internet as we know it. Rates will assuredly go up (and the US already has some of the highest in the world), content will be exclusive based on who your regional internet monopoly is, the web will become essentially filtered based on who the ISP likes.
Space weapons had been banned for a very long time.
The Outer Space Treaty was enacted in 1967. According to wikipedia, there are 99 countries on the treaty, and another 26 who have signed but not ratified.
I agree. It does make sense to have some multiple versions. Say a Home and a Business version that has more networking capability.
However, it's really insane with a half dozen different versions with "sort of descriptive names." It is confusing to even a person who is tech savvy.
The OS also needs fewer versions a simple way to select what is actually installed. The OS comes with so much bloatware that is superfluous to more than 75% of the users. But you have to buy the super version b/c you need one thing that is included (say good networking options).
Do you think she was even capable of running a Windows install disc if they sent it to her?
She had no clue what she needed or wanted, paid for it, then was pissed that it wasn't perfect. Like one of the commentators on the original story said (to paraphrase), she heard she needed books for class, then went to Borders and bought some without ever seeing which ones they were.
Problem is she didn't know what they hell she had or wanted.
The way it's worded, she called and said she had something other than Windows and the computer wasn't working. The tech/customer service rep said that Ubuntu would work, it's a good OS. Then she did an "Uh, okay."
Dell, in general, is pretty good about sending replacements and correcting orders in my experience. I've done it multiple times. I've got replacement RAM, audio cards, Hard drives, and monitors out of them without ever being a PITA. You have to sit through some garbage first depending on the issue ("is the PC plugged in?"), but they'll do it. I've even talked to reps and had them honor last weeks sale prices without any trouble. You just have to know what you want.
There is almost zero incentive to commercialize any of the research. If it (the patent) is public domain, you can put up all the capital to develop and idea, then have it copied by someone else. The economics of it do not favor taking ideas and turning them into products. Research never made it into products, or did so slowly.
By giving the Universities the ability to patent the research, they have a much larger incentive to commercialize their ideas/research. So the Universities now pump out startups and licensing agreements all the time. The knowledge moves quickly to benefit the public.
Slashdot Mirror
The patent was filed in Sept. 1999. There probably wasn't a ton of prior art at that point in time. It took 8 years for it to be granted, which should tell you something.
Yeah, the patent is a monster that attempts to cover a hell of a lot of territory. It's got 171 claims, and is 97 pages long.
It covers every conceivable distribution channel (kiosks, internet, wireless, cable, device to device, publisher direct, etc.). At quick glance, it also covers encryption at just about every step in the process.
The patent isn't to protect an invention, it's to corner a market.
Non-lethal weapons aren't always non-lethal as well.
There are people killed each year by tasers and other non-lethal weapons. Just see the "riot/celebration" after the first Red Sox Series victory a few years ago. A girl was killed by police using non-lethal weapons.
Blaming Obama directly is probably a bit of a stretch in this regard. It is VERY UNLIKELY he had anything to do with the FOIA request.
The only contact he would normally have would be a general guidelines given to the associated Agency. The Agency still is the one who deals with FOIA requests.
National security exemptions are vital.
However, they seem to get thrown around with impunity lately to things that do not appear to have anything to do with national security.
A similar excuse is also used to prevent cleared civilian personnel with a need to know from seeing classified documents, which is wrong.
I'd agree, the 2-D to 3-D transformation is pretty insignificant in the functionality of what actually goes on. In either case, heading and location of your avatar are passed from the client to the server. The server passes your information on to others, and others back to you.
All adding a dimension does is tact on a couple extra bytes to each transfer.
Reading their patent claims, they're patent is VERY broad and IMO pretty obvious.
It's basically saying that the client passes avatar location and heading to the server, and the server passes the info on all other nearby characters back to the clients. Thinking about the problem for a couple seconds, you should be able to determine that it MUST work this way.
Any MMO game with a central server pretty much has no option other to work this way.
------
End software patents!
I with you. Patents do need to have a lifetime of 10-20 years.
However, there needs to be reform on what can be patented. Software patents, business process patents, genomes, etc are all in need of being removed from patentable items. The patent process also needs to be sped up so that it doesn't take 3 years to be granted a patent. Additionally, there needs to be some protection against patent squatters who sit an wait years on a patent with the sole intention of suing infringers.
For copyright, the timeline is entirely too long. These never ending copyrights just harm social progress in the arts. Most money is made shortly after a work is released for nearly all art forms. The entitlement provided is excessive.
How will someone ever figure out who the rights holder is for a photo after 50 years? But that's exactly what you need to do.
It's not the ISP's job to do.
They have no stake in the copyright, the only concern they have is the bandwidth usage.
Historically speaking, many games have not come with complex DRM schemes. The complex ones are pretty recent development. Up through the 90s, the most common were simple code lookups in the manual.
The game still runs, which is probably all that they're going for. You just need a txt file with the code lookups to get past the initial launching.
DRM is not all that hard to decrypt, in the great scheme of things.
It has the fatal flaw of giving you the code and the key and saying "Dont put them together." Granted, they hide it and obscure the connection as much as possible, but you still have both and just need to put them together.
Real encryption schemes hide one portion from the individual. It's insanely harder (or practically impossible) to decipher codes if they don't give you the key.
"Major" news outlets seem to be notorious for doing piss poor fact checking before releasing a story.
Hell, a former president visited by high school and they got the name of the school wrong on the news.
People always complain that R&D wastes money until they have no new products and the company goes under, or a new product comes out of the R&D department.
In the meantime, "R&D is blowing millions of dollars!"
It's usually the first thing cut when budgets are tight, but it is probably the worst thing to cut. It just ensures that your future prospects are even slimmer.
Taking this to the logical conclusion really highlights the major issue with this business strategy.
What happens when every content provider wants to do this sort of scheme? After all, each company feels "My content is at least as valuable as his." It will completely and utterly destroy the internet as we know it. Rates will assuredly go up (and the US already has some of the highest in the world), content will be exclusive based on who your regional internet monopoly is, the web will become essentially filtered based on who the ISP likes.
So much for free exchange of knowledge/ideas.
No way! The RIAA would never lie, exaggerate the truth, or have selected memories in regards to the truth.
Correction, I suppose it's only WMDs in space.
Space weapons had been banned for a very long time.
The Outer Space Treaty was enacted in 1967. According to wikipedia, there are 99 countries on the treaty, and another 26 who have signed but not ratified.
I wish they would rewrite the code and get away from the legacy code in Windows.
Then, allow for an emulation mode to account for some of the problems with back compatibility.
nice. I'm going to hang onto that one.
Looks like time to switch ISPs.
I agree. It does make sense to have some multiple versions. Say a Home and a Business version that has more networking capability.
However, it's really insane with a half dozen different versions with "sort of descriptive names." It is confusing to even a person who is tech savvy.
The OS also needs fewer versions a simple way to select what is actually installed. The OS comes with so much bloatware that is superfluous to more than 75% of the users. But you have to buy the super version b/c you need one thing that is included (say good networking options).
Do you think she was even capable of running a Windows install disc if they sent it to her?
She had no clue what she needed or wanted, paid for it, then was pissed that it wasn't perfect. Like one of the commentators on the original story said (to paraphrase), she heard she needed books for class, then went to Borders and bought some without ever seeing which ones they were.
Problem is she didn't know what they hell she had or wanted.
The way it's worded, she called and said she had something other than Windows and the computer wasn't working. The tech/customer service rep said that Ubuntu would work, it's a good OS. Then she did an "Uh, okay."
Dell, in general, is pretty good about sending replacements and correcting orders in my experience. I've done it multiple times. I've got replacement RAM, audio cards, Hard drives, and monitors out of them without ever being a PITA. You have to sit through some garbage first depending on the issue ("is the PC plugged in?"), but they'll do it. I've even talked to reps and had them honor last weeks sale prices without any trouble. You just have to know what you want.
She had no clue.
It is a very common work schedule in the US Federal Government. Most employees on that schedule seem to really enjoy it.
It is not as common in the private sector in my experience.
There is a huge problem with that though.
There is almost zero incentive to commercialize any of the research. If it (the patent) is public domain, you can put up all the capital to develop and idea, then have it copied by someone else. The economics of it do not favor taking ideas and turning them into products. Research never made it into products, or did so slowly.
By giving the Universities the ability to patent the research, they have a much larger incentive to commercialize their ideas/research. So the Universities now pump out startups and licensing agreements all the time. The knowledge moves quickly to benefit the public.